Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, facing increased scrutiny over his views on foreign policy, flew to Jordan overnight on Thursday. He was scheduled to meet Syrian and Iraqi refugees, his campaign told media outlets, confronting an issue that has upended the immigration debate.
The New York Times reported that secret service agents had travelled with Carson for the visit, which would also take in a hospital and a clinic.
“I find when you have firsthand knowledge of things as opposed to secondhand, it makes a much stronger impression,” Carson told the newspaper.
Carson, like other Republican presidential candidates, has said the US should not accept refugees from Syria’s nearly five-year war “at this time”, citing security concerns.
Republicans have been highly critical of Barack Obama’s relatively modest proposal to admit 10,000 more refugees from Syria in the next fiscal year, raising concerns about the screening process, arguing that it could allow terrorists to slip into the country.
The administration has forcefully derided such criticism, emphasizing its lengthy and thorough vetting process.
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon with no experience of foreign policy, has repeatedly stumbled on the issue. Last week, he suggested refugees of the Syrian conflict should be screened and likened them to rabid dogs.
In the last Republican debate, he made the baseless assertion that the Chinese were in Syria, alongside the Russians and the Iranians. In a recent Fox News interview he failed to name a potential ally in the fight against Islamic State militants.
As Carson’s poll numbers have suffered, a handful of his foreign policy advisers have suggested he has difficulty grasping complex global issues, despite rigorous briefings on the subject.
“Dr Carson is on a learning curve. There’s much for him to learn. He’s not perfect. He’ll never be perfect,” Armstrong Williams, a top adviser, told Bloomberg TV earlier this month.
That followed a report in the New York Times that quoted Duane R Clarridge, described as a senior Carson adviser, as saying that the candidate struggled to learn about foreign policy.
In reply to the charge in the Times, the Carson campaign seemed to accuse the paper of elder abuse in quoting Clarridge, who is 83.
“I know a lot more than I knew,” Carson said in an recent interview on PBS Newshour. “A year from now, I will know a lot more than I know now.”
Carson is due to return to the US on Sunday.
