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Published January 23, 2017
This is a RUSH transcript from "The O'Reilly Factor," August 9, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
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BOLLING: In the "Personal Story" segment tonight, the brawl over battleground states, the "Wall Street Journal" releasing fresh polling of registered voters a short time ago in Ohio. Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump 43 to 38 percent. In Pennsylvania, Clinton has an 11 point advantage 48 to 37 percent. And in Iowa, Clinton is narrowly ahead 41 to 37 percent.
Joining us now with reaction from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, Dr. Ben Carson, who is an advisor to the Trump campaign. Welcome, Dr. Carson. So, I have the Trump campaign senior economic advisor on The Factor last night.
By the way, I love your economic policy layout but somehow today we end up talking about the Second Amendment comment that Mr. Trump made, aren't we trying to go in a new direction?
BEN CARSON, MD, FORMER REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, you know, the left and Donald Trump's opposition can only win if they can constantly make him the issue. So, of course, this is just the beginning, they are going to pick apart every possible thing that he says and try to get off the topic. Because they don't have a reasonable economic plan, they don't have a reasonable plan for dealing with radical Islamic terrorism or failing schools or whole host of other things. So, why wouldn't they want to talk about Donald Trump? Believe me, they will continue to do this.
BOLLING: Right. And so, we talk about some polls and polling numbers. You know, they have slipped over the last couple of weeks. But again, polls are a snapshot in time. They tell you where we are now. They don't tell us where we will be next week, next month. Twelve days ago, he was winning. But the point is, this economic plan, the "Wall Street Journal" liked it. A lot of conservatives liked that economic plan. Why - - how do we get -- how does he get off. How do you get off message today?
CARSON: Well, you know, it's incredibly difficult when people are peppering you with these questions. Now, you know, yesterday in Detroit, you have 14 episodes of disrupters, hoping that he would say something about them. So that that could be the story for the next week or two. He didn't bite on that. So, today they seize on this thing, you know, which is completely ridiculous. If you want to know what he meant by the comment. Why not ask him? Why is that everybody else is an expert on what he means but he can't have a say on it. It doesn't make any sense. It smacks of people who are desperately looking for a way to divert attention away from the important areas.
BOLLING: So, speaking of people who are desperately, maybe not. Maybe trying to divert attention away from the Trump campaign and maybe that economic rollout that you guys put out yesterday were these 50 Republicans, 50 Republicans said that they couldn't vote for Donald Trump, Mr. Trump responded to them this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: These are 50 people that have been running our country forever. And they said we can't support Donald Trump. The reason they can't? You know why? Because I'm not going to hire these people. These are sort of like the people that have been involved with Washington, making decisions, militarily on defense, on other things, take a look what's happened to our country. Our military is depleted. Our vets aren't taken care of. We can't beat ISIS.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BOLLING: So, Dr. Carson, your response to that? Frankly I kind of agree with him.
CARSON: Well, they are the established political class. They see him as an insurgent. Someone who is going to threaten their positions and their prestige and they are going to fight it with everything that they have. Now, I think as time goes on, some of them will begin to actually think beyond their little bruised feelings and will actually begin to think about their children and their grandchildren and what the implications are of having a federal court system and Supreme Court system that is extremely progressive.
It will have a terrible impact on their children. I think some of them will come around to that. But, the fact of the matter is, there are a lot of people coming to Donald Trump who are not traditional Republicans or traditional voters because they understand what's going on. And this is what was predicted by Jefferson. He said we would get to this point, but before we turn to something else the people would awaken. I think the people are starting to wake up.
BOLLING: So, let's stay on this for a second. The timing of that release. Now you laid out your Detroit economic plan yesterday. You got pretty rave reviews amongst conservatives. And then these 50 Republicans released their comments the very next morning. You can't put 50 signatures together overnight. They had to time the release of this. You agree?
CARSON: I lost -- yes. I lost the audio for a minute there.
BOLLING: So I asked about the timing of the release of these 50 signatures. You can't put that together overnight. It takes time to get these people to sign on board. Is there any coincidence that they released it the morning after this economic plan was rolled out that was getting positive feedback from conservative circles?
CARSON: Hard to say but I think they did seize upon the opportunity to once again try to thwart the momentum that was starting to build. I just don't understand them. But what I do understand is that this election is about the established political class versus the people. And it's not about Democrats or Republicans so much. So, you might be surprised when all kinds of people begin to realize what's going on and start getting on the Trump bandwagon and the attacks will be relentless and they will be ridiculous. But I think the people are starting to recognize that the media is part of the problem. And, you know, they are protected by the constitution.
BOLLING: Do you think? Well, you can point your finger to the media but you can hardly ever be wrong. Dr. Carson, we're going to leave it right there. Thank you very much.
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