Carson mis-cites Thomas Jefferson as an author of the Constitution

Ben Carson
(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Speaking in a C-SPAN interview on Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson offered effusive but inaccurate praise for America's third president, Thomas Jefferson. Responding to a question about why he regularly speaks of the Founding Fathers, Carson remarked:

I'm impressed by a lot of them, but particularly impressed with Thomas Jefferson, who seemed to have very deep insight into the way that people would react. And he tried to craft our Constitution in a way that it would control people's natural tendencies and control the natural growth of the government. [Sun Times]

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.