Failed presidential candidate turned failed Donald Trump surrogate Ben Carson really, really does not like the idea of putting Harriet Tubman on our money. First it was the denomination that bothered him—why the $20? Why not the $2? And now it's because argle bargle flapjacks socket wrench.
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson continued his fight against putting Harriet Tubman on the front of the $20 bill in an op-ed published Tuesday, arguing that the move makes the iconic abolitionist "the new face of American debt slavery."
Carson offered a brief biography of Tubman and argued that putting her on the $20 bill was a "cheap trick" to convince black people to support a "nearly bankrupt symbol of American debt."
Now, the aforementioned op-ed is a bit of a hard read, but Carson's central point appears to be that the American dollar is bad, because the Federal Reserve is bad, and so therefore it is very bad form to put a black person on our money that is bad:
The cynical pandering to race, and the exploitation of a real American hero in order to mask the highway robbery being enacted by the Fed and the U.S. Government is nothing short of a disgrace.
Hmm. You know, there was a bit of a dustup earlier in the year when Donald Trump published an "op-ed" that appeared to lift some sections nearly verbatim from a Ben Carson op-ed that appeared a scant two weeks beforehand. Now Ben Carson's writing op-eds that seem to be clipped from old Ron Paul newsletters?
This is further evidence for my theory that every conservative presidential op-ed is written by the same guy, a guy who travels from campaign to campaign like the Johnny Appleseed of talking points. All we have to do to end conservatism in America is find that one guy and permanently glue mittens to his hands.
Where were we? Ah, right. Ben Carson says putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill is an effort by the Federal Reserve to trick black Americans into supporting the malevolent American dollar, because of course it is. Sure, whatever. Can't argue with that. Or at least, no one wants to.