Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Dr. Ben Carson backed President Donald Trump’s classification of Baltimore as a “rodent infested mess.” Carson seemed to defend the president’s recent attacks on Maryland Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose district covers parts of the greater Baltimore area, in an exclusive interview Monday with Tucker Carlson.
As a former pediatric Neurosurgeon, Carson spent most of his medical career practicing at the prestigious Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. For nearly 30 years, Carson performed complex surgeries on young children and lamented the terrible living conditions in East Baltimore where kids were forced to return, following his medical procedures.
Carson mentioned that many the houses in which the children lived “were infested with rats and roaches and ticks and mold and lead and violence.”
“While I was there, I worked on a lot of issues with many politicians, including Elijah Cummings, particularly in terms of childhood education and improving the life for the people,” Carson told Carlson. “And I think what President Trump was trying to say is that rather than spending your time talking about, you know, our brave border agents and investigating endlessly things that you can’t find anything on, why not spend some time working more for these people, you know, who are suffering?”
Carson embraced the idea of Trump and Cummings working together to tackle some of Baltimore’s financial woes and bring some relief to those struggling in Baltimore. Carlson pointed out that Baltimore is a city in which 65 percent of all children are growing up in a single-parent household.
Carson encouraged the city to abide by a poverty study, carried out by the Brookings Institute, proposing three steps to avoid poverty.
“Number one, finish high school. Number two, get married. Number three, wait until you’re married to have children,” Carson said. “But a lot of our policies over these decades have not reflected that, and in fact, have moved us in the opposite direction.” (RELATED: Ben Carson Defends Trump’s Tweets, Says President Is Not A Racist)
Following Trump’s “go-back” tweet to members of the “squad,” Carson justified the president’s attack as warranted and said that they were not at all racist. Carson pointed out that the four members of the “squad” employed anti-American rhetoric to slam law enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and harshly insult American allies such as Israel.