http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/281571-carson-trump-starting-to-believe-in-greater-powerMay 27, 2016, 05:37 pm
Carson: Trump starting to believe in ‘greater power’
By Jonathan Swan
Ben Carson said he thinks Donald Trump is starting to believe in "a greater power" and is praying more often.
Trump's former presidential rival, a key surrogate and possible vice presidential pick, told The Hill on Friday that he believes Trump is becoming more spiritual.
“I know that he has prayed. I have eyewitness,” Carson said in a Facebook Live interview.
Asked whether he had personally seen Trump pray, the retired neurosurgeon, who is a man of deep Christian faith, conceded he had only heard about Trump praying.
“I have not seen him [pray] but I have eyewitnesses who have,” Carson said. “And I think he's starting to move more in that direction. I think that's a good thing.
“I think he's starting to recognize that there's a greater power. And I tell him, just last week, that I believe God is using him.”
In a wide-ranging Facebook Live interview with The Hill, Carson talked about what it was like to forgive Trump after the presumptive Republican nominee brutally attacked his character during the GOP primary contests.
Carson says Trump — who said last year he had never sought forgiveness from God — had never asked for Carson's forgiveness for the personal attacks but had acknowledged them in his own way.
Asked if Trump had ever apologized for comparing him to a pedophile and slurring him in other ways, Carson replied, “In his own way he did.”
During the heat of their primary contest late last year, when Carson briefly led the national polls, Trump claimed that Carson had a pathological temper that was incurable, like being a child molester.
“We were talking and he was just explaining why he said those things,” Carson said.
“And [Trump] said, ‘You know, even though you didn't hit me I had to find a way to somehow beat you back because this wasn't working the way it was supposed to work.’”
Carson said he told Trump that what he had done “is what politicians do.”
“That's what they do,” Carson said, referring to Trump's destruction of his character.
“They are almost like someone who's drowning; they're grasping for straws, for anything that you can get to find a way to stay on top.”
Carson said he doesn't regret his decision not to play hardball against Trump.
“I would never give up my values and principles for political office.”
Asked about the vice presidential rumors and his role in a future Trump administration, Carson said he thought he could accomplish more good as an outside adviser to Trump — a role that he's currently inhabiting.
Carson, who has offered Trump advice on his vice presidential selections, says the only way he'd agree to take a a big job in a Trump administration, such as a Cabinet post, is if Trump effectively told him he was desperate.
“The only way I'd do that is if there was no other person who seemed to really fit, and Donald Trump and others thought I was really the only person who could make that work.”
