Responding to Donald Trump’s concerns about his negotiating ability, Ben Carson insisted, “I’ve had lots of experience doing a whole host of things” including negotiating.
Appearing on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, Carson told host George Stephanopoulos that he “absolutely” has experience negotiating deals.
“I’ve negotiated many things” Carson explained. “When I became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins… [it] was not even on the map at Hopkins at that point.”
“I had to negotiate a number of things in order to create the various different divisions and by the time we got to 2008, U.S. News World Report ranked us the number one pediatric neurosurgery unit in the United States,” Carson said.
“I had to negotiate with many people in different cities as we were putting the Carson Scholars Fund together. It’s now active in all 50 states. As you know, 9 out of 10 nonprofits fail,” Carson added. “Not only that, has won major awards only given to one philanthropic organization in the country out of tens of thousands. That’s not done without having the ability to negotiate.”
Carson also suggested that while he wouldn’t compare himself to anyone, saying, “Bear in mind, there is no one person who does all the negotiation and knows everything.”
Carson explained it is “the important thing is to understand what the stakes are. When you go into a negotiation, the recent Iran negotiation for instance. You have to know how to negotiate. You have to know how to verify, how to make sure that there’s appropriate accountability. You have to be able to take down their infrastructure and you have to know what your goals are.”