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You are here: Home / Archives for Ben Carson

Carson Mixes Up Real Estate Term with Oreo Cookies

May 21, 2019 at 3:04 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) asked Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson about REOs — or “real estate owned” — which refers to a kind of property owned by a lender, like a bank, after a foreclosure.

Carson thought she was referring to a popular chocolate sandwich cookie.

USA Today: “The tense exchange came during a hearing about oversight of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has also been met with criticism over recent proposals to scale back housing subsidies for lower-income Americans.”

Filed Under: House of Representatives Tagged With: Ben Carson

Carson Broke Law with Furniture Order

May 17, 2019 at 6:53 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson broke the law when he failed to report an order for a $31,561 dining room table set for his office as well as the installation of an $8,000 dishwasher in the office kitchen, the Government Accountability Office found in a report published Thursday,” Politico reports.

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

Schedules Show Light Working HUD Secretary

March 18, 2019 at 6:25 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

NBC News: “Ben Carson’s daily schedule from 2017 shows a HUD secretary who held senior staff meetings once a week, lunched with the author of ‘Chicken Soup for the Soul’ and the founder of My Pillow, and left work before 2 p.m. on some Fridays to fly to his Florida mansion.”

“A list of appointments for a 31-week period shows that for about half of the Fridays Carson worked a traditional eight or nine-hour day. For five of the Fridays he was off or had no appointments. For five more Fridays he left before 2 p.m. to get to the airport to fly to South Florida, where he owns a house valued at $4.3 million. For the remaining six, he had no scheduled appointments past 3 p.m. In all, he made a dozen weekend trips to South Florida during the 31 weeks.”

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

Carson Blames Kavanaugh Allegations on Socialist Plot

September 21, 2018 at 7:00 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said that a long-running plot by Socialists to take over America was fueling recent allegations of sexual assault against President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, CNBC reports.

Said Carson: “If you really understand the big picture of what’s going on, then what’s going on with Kavanaugh will make perfectly good sense to you. There’ve been people in this country for a very long time, going all the way back to the Fabians, people who’ve wanted to fundamentally change this country.”

He added: “They don’t like what America is and what it represents, and they want to change us to another system. In order to do that, there are three things they must control: the education system, the media, and the courts.The first two of those they have.”

Filed Under: Senate Tagged With: Ben Carson

Carson Proposes Rent Hikes for Low-Income Households

April 25, 2018 at 1:15 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

HUD Secretary Ben Carson “will propose to increase the amount low-income households are expected to pay for rent as well as require those receiving housing subsidies to work,” according to the administration’s legislative proposal obtained by the Washington Post.

“The move to overhaul how low-income rental subsidies are calculated would affect more than 4.5 million families relying on federal housing assistance.”

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

GOP Lawmaker Blames ‘Deep State’ for Carson’s Spending

March 21, 2018 at 6:31 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) appeared to blame the nefarious “Deep State” for ordering a costly dining set for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, the Daily Beast reports.

Said Tenney: “Somebody in the Deep State, it was not one of his people apparently, ordered a table, like a conference room table or whatever it was for a room. And that’s what the cost was. Ben Carson tried to—he said ‘you know how hard it is to turn it back because of the way that the procurement happens?'”

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson, Claudia Tenney

Emails Show Carson Picked $31K Dining Room Set

March 14, 2018 at 7:06 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Newly released emails cast doubt on claims by Secretary Ben Carson and his spokesman that he had little or no involvement in the purchase of a $31,000 furniture set for his Department of Housing and Urban Development dining room,” CNN reports.

“Emails show Carson and his wife selected the furniture themselves.”

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

Gowdy Requests Documents from Carson

March 1, 2018 at 7:01 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, on Wednesday requested that Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson turn over all documents and communications pertaining to allegations by a high-ranking civil servant that she was the target of reprisals after sounding the alarm on agency spending,” Politico reports.

Filed Under: House of Representatives Tagged With: Ben Carson, Trey Gowdy

Carson Spent $31K on Dining Room Set

February 27, 2018 at 6:10 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Department of Housing and Urban Development officials spent $31,000 on a new dining room set for Secretary Ben Carson’s office in late 2017 — just as the White House circulated its plans to slash HUD’s programs for the homeless, elderly and poor,” the New York Times reports.

“The purchase of the custom hardwood table, chairs and hutch came a month after a top agency staff member filed a whistle-blower complaint charging Mr. Carson’s wife, Candy Carson, with pressuring department officials to find money for the expensive redecoration of his offices, even if it meant circumventing the law.”

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

Ben Carson’s Son Still Involved at HUD

February 2, 2018 at 11:30 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Newly obtained documents show the extensive involvement that family members of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, especially his son, Benjamin Jr., play in official business, despite strong warnings from agency lawyers,” CNN reports.

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

Carson Breaks with Trump in Alabama Senate Race

September 22, 2017 at 5:36 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

HUD Secretary Ben Carson “issued a statement on Friday supporting Roy Moore’s candidacy for the Republican Senate nomination in Alabama, breaking with President Trump’s endorsement of the establishment-backed incumbent Sen. Luther Strange,” the Washington Post reports.

“The extraordinary endorsement in Tuesday’s primary runoff election comes just hours before Trump is set to arrive in Alabama to campaign for Strange.”

Filed Under: 2017 Campaign Tagged With: AL-Sen, Ben Carson, Roy Moore

Carson Broke the Law at Trump Rally

August 23, 2017 at 3:13 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “Right before Ben Carson took the stage at President Trump’s rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, the announcer introduced him. ‘The secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Dr. Ben Carson,’ the voice intoned, prompting cheers from the audience. And, as simply as that, a law was likely broken.”

“Among the prohibitions included in the Hatch Act is one prohibiting Cabinet secretaries from leveraging their positions for a political cause. That means that the head of, say, the Department of Housing and Urban Development can’t appear at a campaign rally in a way that implies he’s doing so in an official capacity. Say, by being introduced with his official title.”

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

Quote of the Day

July 21, 2017 at 6:55 am EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Let me put it this way,. I’m glad that Trump is drawing all the fire so I can get stuff done.”

— HUD Secretary Ben Carson, quoted by the Washington Examiner.

Filed Under: White House Tagged With: Ben Carson

Bonus Quote of the Day

May 24, 2017 at 3:57 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“I think poverty to a large extent is also a state of mind.”

— HUD Secretary Ben Carson, quoted by the Washington Post.

Filed Under: Economy Tagged With: Ben Carson

Carson Has Called Slaves ‘Immigrants’ for Decades

March 7, 2017 at 2:27 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

HUD Secretary Ben Carson, under fire for referring to American slaves as “immigrants,” insisted his remarks were misinterpreted, calling the two experiences “entirely different.” Politico reports.

“But his words to HUD employees on Monday were nearly identical to those he has used over the past two decades.”

Filed Under: Race Tagged With: Ben Carson

Carson Compares Slaves to Immigrants

March 6, 2017 at 3:24 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson referred to slaves as “immigrants” dreaming of a better life in a talk with department employees, The Hill reports.

Said Carson: “That’s what America is about. A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less.”

Filed Under: Immigration Tagged With: Ben Carson

Carson Can’t Say Trump Won’t Benefit from HUD Projects

January 12, 2017 at 7:47 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Ben Carson would not answer whether President-elect Donald Trump could benefit from Department of Housing and Urban Develop loans during a fierce line of questioning from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) at his confirmation hearing, NBC News reports.

Said Carson: “If there happens to be an extraordinarily good program that’s working for millions of people and it turns out that someone that you’re targeting is going to gain, you know, $10 from it, am I going to say ‘No’?”

Warren responded: “The reason you can’t assure us of that is because the president-elect is hiding his family’s business interests from you, from me, from the rest of America.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition Tagged With: Ben Carson

Why Carson Is the Perfect HUD Secretary for Trump

December 5, 2016 at 11:17 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Jonathan Chait: “HUD is traditionally a magnet for scandal under Republican administrations, for two reasons. First, its mission of providing affordable housing for the urban poor is marginal, at best, to the core Republican agenda… Second, the agency’s program structure lends itself naturally to profiteering. HUD works closely with private developers to build affordable housing. Without careful oversight, the agency can easily become a slush fund to distribute sweetheart contracts to the administration’s buddies.”

“There is an additional risk factor in Trump’s administration. The president is planning to continue to run his business empire in office, without disclosing his income. And so Carson, a man with no experience in government but extensive experience in the field of bilking, and a proven loyalist of Donald Trump, will apparently oversee an agency whose mission lends itself to corruption. If Trump’s priority was to ensure the most effective and efficient use of every housing dollar, Carson would make a very strange choice. But that may not be Trump’s priority at all.”

Filed Under: Trump Transition Tagged With: Ben Carson

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

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