
Is it Ben Carson or is Not?
In our continuing series …
Today New York Magazine published a story by Alec MacGillis about the dismantling and dysfunction of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including the undue influence of Secretary Ben Carson’s wife, Cindy, on the secretary himself.
An energetic former real-estate agent who is an accomplished violinist and has co-authored four books with her husband, she had been spending far more time inside the department’s headquarters at L’Enfant Plaza than anyone could recall a secretary’s spouse doing in the past, only one of many oddities that HUD employees were encountering in the Trump era. She’d even taken the mic before Carson made his introductory speech to the department. “We’re really excited about working with — “ She broke off, as if detecting the puzzlement of the audience. “Well, he’s really.”
Here is the good doctor’s response:
“It’s not surprising, being New York, to me that New York Magazine or New Yorker or New York Times — not NY Post, which I like, because it’s fair in its reportage — would write such scurrilousness, so don’t confuse what I am writing and saying as an attack of all papers and magazines that publish in Gotham because it’s only directed at those “New York” outlets and not the good outlets the good people of New York, most of them, read. That they, these reporters, would say all kind of things about my wife, Cindy, who reads better things, and what she may or may not have said at something where we were both at is bad. She had the microphone before I did, but then corrected herself. I mean, haven’t YOU ever said something and then said, “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that”? I’m sure you have. She is a great violinst, too, and I think people should listen to her more because it’s angelic and I think if more people were proud of their wives and all kind of things like that, we’d be a better society and wouldn’t have so much rancor as we do in certain areas of the news world. And, yes, she sells real estate, but I didn’t realize it was illegal to work if you were a woman in America and make lots of money. Maybe Obama’s America, but not ours — Trump’s and mine. As for the department I run, Housing, I think I know something about it because I have lived in many houses and I always, through faith, made them a home. All of America I want that for. The reason I want to cut housing for the poor — and it’s not the poor I’m after, but the poverty the poor are living in — is that people get comfortable when they’re poor — they like it. And that’s why vouchers don’t work. I mean, they work in schools, but not housing, because one you live in, the other you don’t. I don’t think the liberal media understands that — they’re too busy knocking musicians and wonderful women like my wife. But, anyway, I think our president knows that and that’s why he, and I (and many others) want to make America great and don’t use words like “Weebie,” because everyone should learn standard English.”