Dr. Ben Carson, Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, questioned how those painting “Black Lives Matter” on public streets would respond if someone were to paint a Confederate flag on a public street.

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Carson, who made the remarks during an interview on Fox News with anchor Martha MacCallum, noted that there is a difference between “black lives matter,” which is a statement of support for the black community, and Black Lives Matter, which is a “Marxist-driven organization.”

Carson said that Black Lives Matter “espouses things like taking down the model of western family structure, talking about defunding the police, and the host of things on their websites, the marxist influence.” . . .

Later in the interview, MacCallum asked Carson what he thought about Trump calling out those who are painting “Black Lives Matter” on public streets.

WATCH: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson breaks down the Black Lives Matter movement. pic.twitter.com/LztpUwjbA8

— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) July 2, 2020

Transcript and video below:

FOX NEWS HOST MARTHA MACCALLUM: Let’s bring in Dr. Ben Carson. HUD Secretary joining us now. Dr. Carson, always good to have you with us. With regard to this question of the foundation of Black Lives Matter, and when you hear them talk about their marxist ideologies, they are proud of the marxist ideology. Are you concerned about that extending into the broader part of the movement that you see, you know, but people’s t-shirts and everything else? Do you think there’s a danger that emanates from that?

HUD SECRETARY BEN CARSON: Well we are really talking about two different things. Do black lives matter? I think everyone would agree that they do. But we are talking about something else when we are talking about a of movement that espouses things like taking down the model of western family structure, talking about defunding the police, and the host of things on their websites, the marxist influence. These are things that are antithetical to the American model and to patriotism in this country. So I think there are a lot of innocent and good people who think black lives matter just means, we should be taking care of our black citizens and making sure they are not discriminated against, and that is noble and laudable but we have an organization that is taking advantage of the fact that people don’t really know what’s behind a Marxist driven organization.

MACCALLUM: A great point. With regard to what can be said and not said when you talk about Black Lives Matter, this is a tweet from Terry Crews who said, ‘if you are a child of god, you are my brother and sister. I have family of every race, creed and ideology. We must ensure #blacklivesmatter doesn’t morph into #blacklivesbetter.’ That becomes a controversial statement in today’s environment, what do you say to that?

CARSON: Interestingly enough, one of the heroes of everybody in our history is Dr. Martin Luther King. What did he advocate for? A color-blind society. He said I dream of a time when people will be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin. Here we are putting everything in context of color of skin, of external characteristics. As I’ve said before, those things don’t really matter the same way as your brain does. When I open up somebody’s head and I’m operating on their brain, there is nothing in there that says this is a black person or a white person wore a yellow person or a brown person. And that is the thing that actually makes you who you are. As we divide ourselves, we allow ourselves to be divided, we are destroying the very fabric of our nation. This is called the United States of America and this is what we need to think about. Instead of trying to tear down our history, maybe what we need to be doing is adding to our history, let’s put some statues up of Booker T Washingon, George Washington Carver, Elijah McCoy … there’s a lot of things that we could be putting up and make sure that everybody feels that they are included in the development of this great nation of ours.

MACCALLUM: That’s a great idea. Before I let you go, the phrase “A symbol of hate” that the president tweeted about the Black Lives Matter paint that’s going on right in front of city hall downtown, was that a mistake on his part to call it that or not?

CARSON: The larger question is, when you’re in a public forum, a public square, do you have the right to put on there a political statement? I wonder what people would say if somebody painted a confederate flag on a public street? We really need to take into consideration those things. On private property, absolutely do whatever you want to. This is a free country. But we have to recognize that when we put political symbols on public property we have to take responsibility for that.

(Excerpt from The Daily Wire. Featuring Ben Carson.)

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