Ben Carson said on Friday that the media narrative that he lacks foreign policy expertise has made his campaign an "uphill struggle" since the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
"It's an uphill struggle," the Republican presidential candidate said when asked on the Steve Deace Show about his campaign's ground game. "It has been particularly since the terrorist attacks in Paris and here. Because, you know, there's a narrative you know, I'm not a foreign policy expert."
Carson added that, despite this narrative, nobody could "poke any holes" in his foreign policy solutions and said that experts have told him his ideas are "incredibly good, strong policies."
"And yet, when you look at my solutions, both domestically and foreign, no one can poke any holes in them," he said. "And, you know, I've talked to a number of experts and they say, 'Those are incredibly good, strong policies.' But you know, we've gotten to this sort of soundbite society, to where people listen more to, you know, the soundbites and the media than they do to what you're actually saying, so we have to find a way around that and we're in the process of doing that."
Criticism of Carson's statements on foreign policy has been fueled by his claim that the Chinese are in Syria, as well as a comment, reported last month by the New York Times, from one of his advisers that his team has had trouble conveying "intelligent information" on foreign affairs to him.
In another interview on Friday, with Iowa radio host Simon Conway, Carson said he hoped that there would be a lot of foreign policy questions in Tuesday's debate.
"I hope they will ask a lot of questions about foreign policy because that's the area that they've slammed me on and yet nobody seems to want to listen to what I say," he said. "And if you listen to what I say, there's really nobody who can poke any holes in it. And I want to make that very clear to the rest of the nation."