At 12:10 P.M. this afternoon, president-elect Donald Trump tweeted that he was seriously considering retired neurosurgeon turned political candidate Ben Carson as his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
According to Armstrong Williams, Carson’s business manager and frequent spokesman, the offer came after the two former rivals for the Republican nomination met at 11 a.m.
“He’s considering the offer,” Williams said in a phone interview with The Daily Beast on Tuesday night. “They met this morning and Trump among other things asked him to consider the HUD position.”
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This news comes just a day after Carson told The Daily Beast that he would prefer to remain on the outside of the administration but would serve if Trump “truly” needed him. Previously, Carson’s name had been floated as possible leader of the departments of Education and Health and Human Services, but just last week Williams seemed to demur, saying, that “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”
In his tweet today, Trump, who compared Carson’s temperament to that of a child molester during the campaign, said that he was a “a greatly talented person who loves people!”
Pool reports from reporters on scene during the day do not indicate that Carson was present at Trump Tower and a request for confirmation of the meeting from The Daily Beast to the Trump team went unanswered.
Williams said he wasn’t clear as to when Carson would make a decision on the position but said “hopefully after the Thanksgiving holidays.”
“He’s very thoughtful and takes his time,” Williams said of Carson’s decision-making.
As to how Trump determined that Carson would be a good fit for HUD? Williams said simply: “Mr. Trump is a visionary.”
“He knows that Dr. Carson cares about inner cities and rural America,” Williams added.
After all, it was Carson who accompanied Trump on a trip to his childhood home in Detroit where they discovered that the current resident was a supporter of Hillary Clinton.
