Ben Carson is having a wild week. Yesterday, Buzzfeed News uncovered footage of a late-'90s commencement address the surgeon-turned-GOP presidential candidate gave to Andrews University, and in it he lays out a curious historical “theory.”
“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson says in the video, taken in 1998.
Joseph is a figure from the Old Testament who is sold into slavery and becomes a valued adviser to the Egyptian pharaoh. In the Bible, Joseph has a vision in a dream of coming years of famine, which allows Egypt to store grain and survive.
In the video, Carson goes on on to say that the structure of the pyramids supports his claims. “When you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons.”
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This theory flies in the face of basically everything we know about the pyramids and Egyptian history. It’s well-documented that the structures are tombs, and the only real mystery is how they were built. There is absolutely no evidence, besides Carson’s apparently vivid imagination, that they were used for grain storage. But he's since doubled down on his stance, telling CBS only yesterday that "it's still my belief."
Then, because one bizarre turn deserves another, today Carson released a hilarious radio ad. ABC News has posted the the one-minute spot, in which clips of generic statements by the candidate about how great America is are laid over a rap beat while a singer chants out the word “Vote!” and awkwardly tries to rhyme “Carson” with “awesome.”
Ben Carson is, like, totally down to get jiggy with it with you kids, y’all. What do you think of his dope tax plan? Let’s all twit about it!