On a trip to Baltimore apparently designed to clean up the mess President Donald Trump has made smearing the city, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson found on Wednesday that he wasn’t all that welcome.
He was trying to give a press conference to discuss his department’s efforts in the city. But the area his staff had picked out for the event turned out to be owned by a nearby church, and it was not happy with his use of its land.
“It’s a church — they say, ‘Get off of our property!’” Carson told reporters. “I mean, a church! When we’re talking about helping people. This is just the level to which we have sunk.”
His disingenuous outrage about getting kicked off the church’s land is galling. Just this weekend, Trump attacked the city as a “rat and rodent-infested mess.” When he was criticized, the president people in the city thanked him for pointing out that they were living in “Hell.” And the whole attack began because Trump is angry that Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, whose district includes Baltimore, is the chair of the House Oversight Committee providing a check on the administration. There should be no surprise that city residents wouldn’t be happy to see a Cabinet official.
Moreover, the Church said that Carson hadn’t asked for permission to use the land and was therefore trespassing.
Carson previously worked as a brain surgeon at Johns Hopkins University in the city.