Carson says America 'in the process of losing' its cities, but solutions 'built already into our foundation'

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Ben Carson on Americans fleeing cities run by Democrats

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson discusses the state of U.S. cities with Laura Ingraham.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson told "The Ingraham Angle" Thursday that the U.S. is "in the process" of losing its cities unless the treatment of law enforcement and other issues are improved.

"Fortunately, the solutions to this are built already into our foundation," Carson said. "You know, I was at the National Archives today with the first lady and we were looking at documents of freedom and one of the real keys here is the people. Our country is about the people and the people have to inform themselves.

"The way [the U.S.] was initially structured is that the media would be the mechanism for informing the people," he added. "That's the reason the press is the only business that's protected by our Constitution. But of course, they sort of left us. Now it's going to be up to the people to find what the truth is themselves."

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Carson said the way to improve America's communities, especially its cities, is to invest time and effort into maintaining them.

"But if you're living in the city and you keep electing the same people and they keep doing the same thing and making promises which they continue to break, that would be time to do some analysis and say, Maybe I need to switch'," he said. "We should look for results, who makes promises and keeps them? That should be the issue, not what color somebody is or what particular party they belong to."

Ingraham then asked Carson to respond to a recent statement by Black Lives Matter New York Chairman Hawk Newsome, who slammed the idea that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is considering Rep. Val Demings, D-Fla., a former Orlando police chief, as a potential running mate.

"Joe Biden would be an idiot to put her on the ticket, people are already on the fence about him," Newsome said. "When black people become police officers [like Demings], they are no longer black, they are blue."

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Carson called Newsome's statement "pretty nutty" and said that it flies in the face of the words of Martin Luther King Jr.

"[MLK wanted] to evaluate people based on their character and not the color of their skin," Carson said, "and we've gone so far from that -- it's all about identity politics.

"But I think we may have a surprise coming, because I think the American people are a lot smarter than anybody gives them credit for. I certainly hope that's the case, because if that is the case, America's future is solid."