Ben Carson said on Monday that he is open to reconsidering recent moves to lift a ban on gays and lesbians in the military and to allow women to serve in combat, while his new campaign manager said the idea of women serving in combat roles is dubious.

“There are just certain realities, where men can do certain things better, women can do certain things better,” Maj. Gen. Robert Dees, Carson’s recently installed campaign chairman, told CNN’s Jake Tapper in a joint interview with Carson.

Carson himself said he’d be willing to sit down and examine the evidence if advisers encouraged him to reverse some of the social changes that have been made regarding the military. “You make decisions based on evidence and not on ideology, so yes I would be willing to sit down with people from both sides and examine the evidence. And make decisions based on what the evidence shows,” Carson said. 

In December the Pentagon announced that all combat roles would be opened to women, which sparked some pushback among congressional Republicans.

Dees, who has come under scrutiny in the past for his comments about Muslims and African-Americans, was pressed by Tapper about his views on the military. “You’ve said, general, that social experimentation within our military is weakening our nation, what do you mean by that?” Tapper asked.

“Everyone is not good at everything and a lot of times because of perhaps what some would call social engineering, we have tried experiments within the military — such as the role of women in combat. Certainly some women can perform well in combat under certain tasks,” Dees said. “But if you look at the population demographics, most women, when you’re talking thousands, cannot properly carry a 230-pound soldier with rucksack and combat vest on, off the battle field.”

Tapper then asked Dees whether that applied to gays and lesbians serving openly in the military. In 2011, President Barack Obama repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that kept gays and lesbians from serving openly. 

“The first priority again is cohesion and the second priority would be that the commander in chief listen to the best military advice,” Dees said. “On a number of these social issues the best military advice has been thwarted.”

Dees’ new role came after a major shakeup last week that included the resignation of five Carson staffers. Carson said on Monday that “operations, the ability to execute things” were not happening with the previous staff. Carson defended the way the changes were handled, saying they could have been done better, but they needed to happen.