Ben Carson Champions American Exceptionalism: 'There's No French Dream,' 'No

He continued: "But it kept going and I said, 'Lord, this was not on my bucket list, but if you truly want me to do this... nothing is impossible for you, so if you open the doors, I will walk through them, ' and he began opening the doors".

Carson, who believes that the Egyptian pyramids were built by the biblical figure Joseph, cautioned against being ill-informed without addressing the role higher education plays in informing. In the painting, Carson is larger than Jesus.

In his turns at the microphone, the popular political neophyte bobbled more than a few facts, struggled for coherence at times and offered a almost blank slate on what he'd do as president about the Islamic , big banks and other leading issues of the day.

In Virginia Wednesday, Carson instead stuck mostly to his standard campaign speech, framing it for his young crowd.

A closer look at Carson's answers to the five questions that came his way.

Jim Tomsula not talking about quarterback decision

Carson raised eyebrows in the debate when he introduced China as a player in Syria while commenting on the work of USA special forces in the region and Russian President Vladimir Putin's aggressive military posture.

For more on the 2016 USA presidential race and to learn about the undecided voters who determine elections, visit the Reuters website.

But Scott, who plans to announce an endorsement after he has held town hall meetings with all the Republican candidates, said the contest is far from over.

Asked what he would do to overcome the GOP's challenge in attracting minorities, Carson - the only African-American seeking the presidential nomination - said his "message... of empowerment is going to continue to infiltrate the black community, the Latino community, all of the communities".

"You stab somebody and the newspapers say you didn't do it", Trump said.

Republican and Democratic presidential candidates are divided over the handling of racially-charged protests at the University of Missouri and Yale University. "The real question is: Are we willing to stand up for those values and principles or will we allow ourselves to be intimidated by the secular progressives?" "Too many people believe they are a credible news source when they are not", he said.

"He was on the lean side" in providing details, said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the nonpartisan Brookings Institution and Urban Institute. He campaigns on his religious testimony, and evangelicals see him as one of them.

Debate host Neil Cavuto did get to a question about Carson's past a half-hour into the debate, but it was pretty tame - asking whether he felt the scrutiny was fair.

"We will have the money and the organization to go all the way through to the convention and we'll have more than a handful of delegates", Watts said. If we don't do this, somebody like Trump or Carson might actually end up in the executive office. "We've raised $4 million in the last seven days".

"The weight of evidence now [shows] that increases in the minimum wage have had little or no negative effect on the employment of minimum-wage workers, even during times of weakness in the labor market", the economists wrote.

"I have clung to that through all kinds of adversity", he said Wednesday.