Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) insulted Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson Thursday at a Congressional Black Caucus Foundation event in Washington, D.C.
Carson "doesn't understand" what he's talking about when it comes to poverty, she claimed.
"Look at Ben Carson," she said. "My God. My grandmother would call him an educated fool."
"Here's a man who has a reputation of being a highly competent surgeon, but when he talks about poor people, he says they're the cause of their poverty. He doesn't understand why you didn't do what he did and why you didn't make it like he made it. And he doesn't know the difference between slavery and immigration," Waters added.
Waters was presumably referring to an interview Carson gave in May in which he said poverty was "a state of mind." Facing backlash for what many perceived as insensitive remarks, Carson eventually explained himself.
"What I'm saying is when you develop the right kind of thinking-- you approach things differently," Carson said. "Attitude helps tremendously."
Self-sufficiency, not more government welfare, he said, is the solution.
I don't have the whole transcript of Ms. Waters's remarks Thursday morning, but I wonder if she mentioned that Carson himself grew up in a struggling household in Detroit, where his single mother had to work multiple jobs to care for him and his brother. He also had a history of lashing out violently at school.
Carson overcame these obstacles to become Johns Hopkins's Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery. Oh yeah, and he successfully pulled off a 22-hour operation to separate conjoined twins.
Some "fool."
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