Politics

NYC Councilman Says Ben Carson Is HUD Secretary Only Because He’s Black

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David Krayden Ottawa Bureau Chief
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New York Councilman Jumaane Williams says Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson was only appointed because he “has some melanin in his skin.”

Williams was a guest on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Monday to respond to comments from California Rep. Maxine Waters, who vowed to go after Carson when he appears before her housing committee.

Daily Caller founder Tucker Carlson asked Williams if he had “any evidence” for calling Carson an “affirmative action hire, a quota hire.”

“There, for me, seemed no other reason for a man who was clearly unqualified, had no experience in housing at all, whatsoever, and when you have the word ‘urban’ in it, to put someone with some melanin in his skin … that was reason enough for me.”

Williams went further, saying that Carson was part of a white supremacist agenda because “people who believe in neo-Nazism, people who believe in [white] supremacy support those [Trump] agendas, support those ideologies, support those polices, and Ben Carson is part of those who support it.”

Carlson asked Williams if he knew what McCarthyism was, because “that was smearing people unfairly with the beliefs of those they had nothing in common with.”

Williams claimed that Carson doesn’t “agree with anything that HUD is supposed to do” because he has said that poverty is a choice, is also “trying to roll back the fair housing program and “just recently he knocked down 40 buildings … and put 400 people into homelessness.”

Carlson asked Williams if the Republicans were to blame for the 63 people were “shot in Chicago last weekend, almost all of them African-American.”

After Williams declared he would love to come back on the show and discuss “gun violence,” Carlson asked, “I wonder if anything that you’re saying improves the lives of anyone.”

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