You can actually be the smartest person in the room—on paper—and say the dumbest shit. It’s what some in hood culture call “that smart dumb shit.”
Enter Ben Carson, a.k.a. Uncle Ben.
The current Housing and Urban Development Secretary is defending what some have deemed as transphobic remarks—and of course accusing the media of spreading “blatant mischaracterizations” of his statements.
According to a staff memo obtained by Politico, Benjamin Solomon Carson Sr. said he wanted “to set the record straight,” claiming the media had reported the story irresponsibly.
He’s really playing from Trump’s handbook—blame the media.
Ironically, these two guys were once heralded by these same media outlets before they took on the deplorable course of destruction at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But I digress. Back to Uncle Ben’s memo:
“During a recent meeting with local staff in San Francisco, I made reference to the fact that I had heard from many women’s groups about the difficulty they were having with women’s shelters because sometimes men would claim to be women,” he stated. “This made many of the women feel unsafe, and one of the groups described a situation to me in which ‘big hairy men’ would come in and have to be accepted into the women’s shelter even though it made the women in the facility very uncomfortable.”
Ummmm, to quote my favorite Nene Leakes GIF: Say What Now?
Candy’s husband argued his “point was that we have to permit policies that take into consideration the rights of everybody, including those women.”
On Sept. 19, the Washington Post reported on Carson’s remarks in San Francisco concerning access to the shelters for homeless women. Carson’s “big, hairy men” description was in reference to transgender women.
According to WaPo, the once-acclaimed neurosurgeon allegedly also complained that society no longer understood the dichotomy between men and women.
One HUD staffer told the newspaper that “the sentiment conveyed was these were not women, and they should not be housed in single-sex shelters—like we shouldn’t force people to accept transgender people in this context because it makes other people uncomfortable.”
In the wake of the report, Democrats—including Reps. Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts and Jennifer Wexton of Virginia—called on Carson to resign, slamming his remarks as “sickening” and “revolting.”
A senior HUD official released a statement to the Post saying, “The Secretary does not use derogatory language to refer to transgendered individuals. Any reporting to the contrary is false.”
LGBTQ media advocacy organization GLAAD’s vice president of programs Zeke Stokes said Carson is “unfit to serve,” according to NBC News.
Presidential candidate hopeful Julián Castro, the former HUD head during the Obama administration, tweeted that Carson’s alleged remarks “normalize violence against” black transgender women, noting that 19 black transgender women have been killed this year.
“As HUD Secretary, I protected trans people,” Castro wrote on Twitter. “I didn’t denigrate them.”
On Friday evening Carson appeared on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight to double down on his statements.
“I simply pointed out the fact that, you know, we have to have policies that take into consideration everybody’s rights,” the ultra-Christian and politically conservative Carson said. “I say everybody has equal rights. Nobody gets extra rights.”
“The federal government doesn’t need to be telling people who is a man or who is a woman,” he said. “That’s a decision that they can make by themselves. And that’s basically what we’re saying. And I quoted, you know, a group that came to me and they were very upset and they said, you know, a big hairy man comes in here and he says he’s a woman and that upsets us because many of us are trying to escape from that. And I’m simply saying we ought to take them into consideration also.”
“You know, if I wake up tomorrow and I feel like I’m Chinese, it doesn’t necessarily make me Chinese. You know, there are biological and scientific issues that have to be dealt with, too,” when the quasi-shoe-eating Carlson ignorantly asked about someone deciding to change their change and if their gender will automatically change.
“But, regardless of that, you know, I have always said we are supposed to serve all the people and you know, somebody wants to be transgender, that’s fine,” the Detroit native continued. “We try to serve them as well. But my point is we also have to take into consideration the other people. And I have offered transgender groups an opportunity to let me know what their solution would be so that everybody’s rights are observed. I haven’t heard one peep.”
And when asked about being considered a bigot—for spewing bigoted bullshit, in truly Holy Rolling Hypocritical fashion, Carson bible-thumped like the biggest and the best of them.
“You know, they have already made up their mind that I hate transgender people, which is completely untrue,” he said. “You know, the Bible tells us that we have to love everybody and that Jesus died for everybody. And you truly believe that, but it also tells you that if you stick to Biblical principles you will be persecuted, so I am not surprised at that either. But it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t always continue to try to do what is right and let the chips fall where they may.”
And there we go talking about Christ. Okay, I’m out.
Happy Good News Day, y’all.