Dr. Ben Carson Confirms He Was Offered HUD Secretary, Explains Qualifications

Trump and Carson clap. Photo: Michele Eve Sandberg/Corbis via Getty Images

In a tweet on Tuesday, Donald Trump suggested a possible cabinet position for Dr. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who reportedly turned down a job as secretary of Health and Human Services because he lacks experience.

If Carson didn’t think he had the experience to run HHS, wouldn’t he also feel unqualified to run HUD, an agency that, as its name suggests, deals with housing and urban development? What could Trump be thinking? Here are two guesses:

In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday night, Carson confirmed that Trump has offered him a position in his cabinet, and HUD is “one of the offers that’s on the table.” When asked if he knows anything about housing policy, Carson told Neil Cavuto: “I know that I grew up in the inner city and have spent a lot of time there, have dealt with a lot of patients from that area, and recognize that we cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities.”

Carson said in the coming days he’ll be “thinking and praying” about whether to take the job.

Whatever Carson decides, it’s hard to tell what Trump gains by hinting about appointments on Twitter. And that brings us to this: A new Quinnipiac poll has found that 59 percent of Americans believe the president-elect should delete his Twitter account, proving that the majority of Americans agree with Hillary Clinton on at least two things.

This post was updated to include Carson’s remarks.

Dr. Ben Carson Confirms He Was Offered HUD Secretary