Dr. Ben Carson told "Fox & Friends" he was "meticulous" about deciding to run for president in 2016, and announcements by other potential Republican presidential contenders would not affect his decision.
Numerous potential GOP candidates have been coming forward to express an interest in a bid for the White House following former Florida Gov.
Jeb Bush's announcement early this year that he was forming a political action committee that would allow him to raise and spend money toward that effort.
Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee for president, has told donors he's
considering another run for the White House, and advisers to Sen. Marco Rubio told ABC News the Florida Republican was
preparing a campaign and had hired a fundraiser.
"I'm very meticulous. I'm a surgeon. All the i's have to be dotted and the t's have to be crossed. And, you don't change that just because somebody else has made an announcement," Carson, a retired pediatric surgeon, said Friday.
Carson has been sending signals he would enter the race in a Republican primary that is shaping up to be a crowded field. He said he was "glad to see people getting in," because it was a pivotal moment for the future of the United States.
"It is so critical that we have the right candidate in 2016. Making an error and allowing another progressive to get in who can appoint two or three more Supreme Court judges would have a profound effect on what America becomes," he said.
As a pediatric surgeon who had spent his career "trying to give life to children," Carson said government debt and the direction of the country were particularly troubling for the future of the nation's youth.
"When I look at our nation, and I understand we have an $18 trillion debt, and we're throwing away so many of our values, I wonder what kind of quality of life they will have. I have to fight for that," he said.
A believer in smaller government, Carson said President Barack Obama didn't understand "government employees, including the president, are just that, employees of the people."
"This country was designed with the people at the center. The government is supposed to conform to the people, not the other way around.
"(Obama is) looking more for the utopia that many others have looked for in the past, which winds up with a very few elites at the top controlling everything, a rapidly diminishing middle class, and a greatly expanded dependent class. That's exactly what we don't want to happen," he said.
Watch the video here.
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