Ben Carson tries to explain involvement with ‘propaganda’

It wasn’t an intentional attempt to appeal to young voters, but Ben Carson did end up the victim of a situation youth fall prey to on a regular basis.

During last week’s Republican primary debate, CNBC debate moderators asked Dr. Carson about his involvement in Mannatech, a nutritional supplement company with a history of deceptive marketing lawsuits. Carson admitted he uses the product, but called any reports of his involvement with the company “propoganda.”

The day after the debate, AM 770 KTTH’s David Boze discovered a Mannatech infomercial online featuring Carson, where he detailed how the product improved his well being. During an interview on Wednesday, Boze asked Carson how he could deny involvement with Mannatech given this seemingly damning video evidence.

“That’s very easy to explain,” Carson said. “After I did a paid speech they said ‘would you give some words for our Mannatech associates to encourage them,’ and I did. It was not supposed to be used publicly, it was certainly not supposed to be used on the Internet.”

As has happened so many times in the Internet age, a video, filmed with only a small audience in mind, was leaked to the masses. Carson said the video was supposed to remain private, and he maintains he isn’t involved with Mannatech.

Boze also asked Carson to clarify recent comments comparing certain elements of American politics to Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

“What I actually said was that most of the people in Nazi Germany did not believe in what Hitler was doing, but did they speak up? Did they say anything? Did they try to resist?” Carson asked. “No, and that’s one of the real dangers of subjugating your beliefs to political correctness or the whims of society, because you will go wherever that society takes you.”

Carson decried the lack of education directly related to the Constitution, a problem he hopes to help remedy with his book, “A More Perfect Union: What We the People Can Do to Reclaim Our Constitutional Liberties.”

“It was our own founders who said our freedoms are dependent upon a well-informed and educated populace,” Carson said. “They said if we ever become anything other than that the nature of the country will rapidly change. Of course the reason for that is people, not knowing what their rights are and not knowing how their government works, would be easily manipulated and all it would take would be slick politicians and a complicit media and away you go.”

Carson wrote the book with his wife, Candy Carson.