Ben Carson: Left's attacks on Black conservative Herschel Walker an 'attempt to divide the Black community'

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Ben Carson: Left's attacks on Black conservative Herschel Walker an 'attempt to divide the Black community'

Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson on Monday accused the left of attempting "to divide the Black community" through racial attacks against Black conservatives like Republican Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker.

TOCCOA, Ga. – EXCLUSIVE: Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson on Monday accused the left of attempting "to divide the Black community" through racial attacks against Black conservatives like Republican Georgia Senate nominee Herschel Walker.

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital following a Walker campaign rally in Toccoa, Georgia, Carson said it was inevitable that former football star would receive such criticism because of the color of his skin, and that such division had been happening for centuries.

"Well of course he's going to receive criticism because you have to recognize that there has been an attempt to divide the Black community since slavery," Carson said. "You'd tell the slaves that worked in the house they were better than the ones in the yard, the ones in the yard that they were better than the ones in the field. After slavery the light skinned ones were better than the medium skinned ones." 

Carson added that the problem was linked to the divide between liberals and conservatives across the country today, with each side calling the others traitors and keeping the country from working together to actually solve problems.

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Former United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Dr. Ben Carson promotes his book during the Conservative Political Action Conference Texas 2022 conference at Hilton Anatole in Dallas Aug. 4, 2022. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Walker has been the subject of sharp criticism for being a Black conservative and Republican, including from a number of liberal media figures.

In July, frequent far-left MSNBC guest Elie Mystal claimed in one segment that Walker was "what Republicans want from their Negroes." 

"A lot of people have been asking me to say something about the man on MSNBC that called me an N-word. Here’s what I got to say about that: Shame on MSNBC and shame on him. I’m going to pray for both of them because they need Jesus," Walker said in a response to the segment.

Mystal later claimed on Twitter he did not call Walker "the N word."

Another MSNBC guest, liberal Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude, Jr., said last month that Republicans wanted a "Black Manchurian candidate" they can "own" like Walker.

A few days earlier, Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah characterized Walker, as well as rapper Kanye West, as "toxic" Black men acting as dumb and violent "servants" to their "White masters."

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Georgia Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks during a campaign rally on Nov. 28, 2022 in Cumming, Georgia. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Carson also warned that the U.S. was at risk of losing its republic, and said the Georgia runoff election between Walker and incumbent Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock was about "common sense versus ideology."

"It's so important because this election is not about people. This is about ideas. We're talking common sense versus ideology. We're talking about a country that is of, by and for the people, and a country that is of, by and for the government," he said. 

"We need to make sure that people really understand that distinction because there's an attempt to divert attention away from the real issues," he added, before referencing a famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin that the Founders gave America "a republic, if you can keep it."

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When asked what Walker's team needed to do differently to avoid a Republican loss similar to the one that brought Warnock into office following a runoff election in Jan. 2021, Carson pointed to the "leftist" policies pushed by Democrats in control of Congress.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson speaks with Fox News Digital following a rally in support of Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker in Toccoa, Georgia on Nov. 28, 2022. (Brandon Gillespie/Fox News)

"Well one thing that's very different now than two years ago is that people have had an opportunity to see what the agenda of the leftists are and where it's heading. So you'd have to be pretty blind not to recognize that it's going in a direction that's completely antithetical to the principles of the founding of this country," he said.

"We get to make a very clear choice: Do we like America and do we like what America stands for? Or do we want to go somewhere else? And that's what's really different this time around," he added.

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The runoff between Walker and Warnock will he held Tuesday, Dec. 6. 

Fox News' Lindsay Kornick and Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.