Just two days after saying that a Muslim should not be president of the United States, Ben Carson has now changed his position.
Speaking in Ohio on Tuesday morning, Carson stressed that he was talking about a person's desire to implement a theocracy in the United States and then added, "I don't care what a person's religion beliefs are or religious heritage is. If they embrace our Constitution and are willing to place that above their religious beliefs, I have no problem with that."
While Carson's position has shifted, he also blamed the flap over his comments on political correctness.
"The only way we fix that is fix the P.C. culture in our country." he added, "We fix America, and we get people who actually start listening .... and stop trying to fit everything into a P.C. model," he said.
Carson's campaign has been under scrutiny since he declared on NBC's Meet The Press that a Muslim should not be president of the United States. Asked by host Chuck Todd whether faith should matter to voters when deciding on a presidential candidate. Carson said that it "depends on what that faith is."
"I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that," he said later.
Since his initial comments, Carson has come under fire from fellow candidates, including Bernie Sanders, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, and Chris Christie, the White House, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was inspired by Carson's comments to bring back a Quran give-away.
Despite the criticism, Carson, appearing on Fox News, said on Monday night he'd support a Muslim president only if they rejected Islamic Sharia law.
"We don't put people at the head of our country whose faith might interfere with them carrying out the duties of the Constitution," he said.
.@RealBenCarson clarified he was referring to Muslims who had not rejected Islamic Sharia Law http://t.co/FcpcQxQ8qX pic.twitter.com/Lh71LTA2l0— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 22, 2015
Carson echoed this position in a Facebook post Monday night.
(function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));I wanted to get back to answering questions tonight sent in by you guys. Remember, you can send in your questions via...Posted by Dr. Ben Carson on Monday, September 21, 2015
While Carson and his campaign have evolved their messaging on the retired neurosurgeon’s comments on Muslims, Carson has not apologized and there’s little indication that he will do so.
He also has claimed that he believes many Muslims would support his campaign for president.
"I heard from a lot of Muslim-Americans just in the last 24 hours that I’ve worked with, that I’ve trained, that I’ve operated on,” Carson said, adding that he believes they understand his viewpoints.
Additional reporting by The Associated Press