In a whirlwind week, Ben Carson has gone from being put up for two Trump Cabinet positions to declining to work in the Cabinet at all to now being tapped to be the nation’s next housing secretary.
Multiple outlets reported yesterday that Donald Trump had offered the famed former Johns Hopkins surgeon to the lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. On Fox News yesterday, Carson nearly said as much, noting that the position was “one of the offers that’s on the table.”
Asked rather gently by host Neil Cavuto if he knows anything at all about housing policy, Carson noted that he grew up in the inner city, has known patients from the inner city and has “spent a lot of time there.” He didn’t add much else other than noting that he agrees with Trump’s repeated assertion that “inner cities are in terrible shape.”
Trump tweeted this about the man he once compared to a child molester:
Despite the fact that Carson holds an MD from the University of Michigan and has achieved fame and success as a neurosurgeon, only one of the three Cabinet positions for which he has reportedly been considered has anything to do with medicine. Last week, word got that the Trump had Carson on a list of candidates for the positions of secretary of health and human services or secretary of education.
Last week, Carson’s associate Armstrong Williams shared that his boss felt he was too inexperienced to work in the Cabinet. But after Carson said otherwise, Armstrong told the LA Times that the HUD position is “a role that plays to Dr. Carson’s passions.” He also was quoted as saying rather loftily, “Dr. Carson has experience with everything. You’d be shocked at the depth of his experience.”
According to the AP, Carson will decide whether to accept the position to lead the agency over Thanksgiving.
