Ben Carson, as the sole African American still employed by Donald Trump, was sent down to Baltimore in the hopes of softening the bigot in chief’s recent comments about the city and Rep. Elijah Cummings. The Trump family’s historic racism, connected directly to inner city housing and slumlord antics in places like Baltimore and New York City, is no secret to anyone willing to do the bare minimum of research. And anyone trying to defend Trump’s racist comments about anything is going to go down like a lead balloon—which is exactly what happened to HUD director Carson.
On Wednesday, Ben Carson’s team had set up a place where the embarrassment to neurosurgeons would stand for photos. It was an area in West Baltimore, in front of row houses, many of which had been boarded up. The hope, it seems, was to show how right Trump was, but to not have Trump’s racist face saying it. Unfortunately, as The Atlantic’s Peter Nicholas, who was there, reports, Morning Star Baptist Church of Christ owns the property where Carson and the press were set up, and 71-year-old Gregory Evans—a member of the church—was there to tell Carson et. al that they needed to get to getting.
“Why did someone come onto church property without permission?” Evans asked us, as he shooed us away. “This community needs some support on all kinds of issues—on dilapidated housing and everything else. All of a sudden you’re going to show up on our property and not even ask permission to be here?”
According to Nicholas, Carson was not happy about getting kicked off of church property. This makes sense as Carson considers himself a very religious person. But, Ben Carson’s religiousness is less the love thy neighbor, do unto others as you would have done unto you kind, and more of the I’m so narcissistic and self-serving I need something to pretend shows I’m humble kind.
Carson’s press conference was just as self-serving as one might think, including references to God making Carson the head of housing and urban development so that he can fix the conditions of children he once operated on as a surgeon. Carson also “claimed” that Trump had invested $16 billion into Baltimore—a large number that elicited the question “Do you think that money was stolen?” Carson said that the Trump administration “needed to look into how that investment was utilized.” When asked if Trump’s remarks about Baltimore were racist, Carson finished his press conference.
