Donald Trump may have saved 1,000 jobs in Indiana, but Ben Carson is still unemployed.
It has been over a week since the retired neurosurgeon teased an imminent announcement about a potential cabinet appointment in Trump’s administration on his Facebook page.
“After serious discussions with the Trump transition team, I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly to making our inner cities great for everyone,” Carson wrote. “We have much work to do in strengthening every aspect of our nation and ensuring that both our physical infrastructure and our spiritual infrastructure is solid. An announcement is forthcoming about my role in helping to make America great again.”
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Last Tuesday morning Carson met with Trump to discuss a position as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. By all appearances, it seemed like the meeting went swimmingly. Trump excitedly tweeted about it—a sure sign that his interest had been piqued, and plied away from cable news. Carson’s business manager Armstrong Williams told The Daily Beast that the contemplative Carson would consider the offer and likely make a decision after Thanksgiving.
“Mr. Trump is a visionary,” Williams said of Trump’s apparent idea to offer Carson a job for which he has no experience. “He knows that Dr. Carson cares about inner cities and rural America.”
Flash forward one humiliating scallop and frog-leg dinner with Mitt Romney, some tweets about fake voter fraud and a revolving door of auditions for the reality television show known as “Donald Trump’s Administration” and there has been no update on the situation.
During a daily press call with the transition team on Thursday morning, spokesman Jason Miller did not respond directly to a question about the status of Carson’s potential job.
“Dr. Carson is another person who’s been a fantastic ally,” Miller said. He implored those on the call to wait for news on this front.
Meanwhile, Williams told The Daily Beast “no comment,” when asked about the position on Thursday.
It’s not all that surprising that this rollout was botched given the fact that Carson’s camp didn’t initially think that he was qualified to even hold a government position.
“Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency,” Williams said on November 15. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”
Trump waffling on a decision based on differences with internal factions of his brain trust is not an anomaly but rather a symptom of his process. Yet there’s been no indication that there is an ongoing fight with vested interests over a position that, for all intents and purposes, has seemed like an afterthought.
And as for Carson’s side, there have been previous instances in which he has been relinquished from duty while Williams spun it as a willful exiting. This scenario played out when Carson was demoted from the vice presidential selection team during the campaign, according to Trump sources, a narrative that Williams contested to The Daily Beast.
For the meantime, no other names have been floated for the HUD position from Trump’s transition team and they are referring to Carson when asked questions about the process.
Around and around we go.
