On Wednesday, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson invoked abortion as he fired back at Rep. Ilhan Omar one day after the congresswoman criticized him for his appearance at a House hearing.
“I hope @IlhanMN knows I care about all people, even those she doesn’t recognize as having a right to life,” Ben Carson tweeted on Wednesday, referencing Rep. Omar’s stance supporting women’s right to an abortion.
The HUD Secretary seemed to trip up multiple times during the Tuesday House Financial Services Committee hearing, he appeared to confuse a real estate term with Oreo cookies, and he tried to reclaim time during Rep. Ayanna Pressley’s five minutes of questioning, even though the rules don’t allow it, as The Hill reported.
“Not sure he was fully awake” during the Tuesday hearing, Rep. Omar tweeted “Maybe he meant to reclaim his time back to sleep.”
Ben Carson, a former brain surgeon, mentioned his time in medicine in his response to Rep. Omar.
“Since you brought it up… I know what it’s like to actually be sleepy, especially after 18-hour surgeries and operating on babies in the womb,” Carson posted on Twitter.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson fired back on FOX Business.
“You can see that some of the networks are only interested in those kinds of sound bites that they can use to ridicule,” he told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney Opens a New Window. on Wednesday. “The fact of the matter is I was having difficulty hearing her.”
The exchange began after California Democrat Rep. Katie Porter asked Ben Carson to explain the gap in REO rates.
“Do you know what an REO is?” she asked.
“OREO?” Carson replied, referring to the cookie by that name.
“No, not an Oreo—an REO,” countered Porter, who then explained that she was asking about real-estate owned properties.
The HUD Secretary stated that he is very familiar with foreclosed properties and REOs and has not only read “extensively” about them but even knew about them as teenager of where he grew up in Detroit. He believes that Porter is not up to date on the current REO portfolio.
“When a family gets into a problem with their mortgage and it’s backed by our agency we go through a lot of procedures with the banks to make sure that they don’t get foreclosed upon and the few cases where they do obviously we are able to sell those properties very quickly,” Ben Carson explained. “And the REO portfolio just over the last 10 years has dramatically decreased by ten-fold you know 65 thousand down to 65 hundred.”
“So I suspect when Katie Porter was an expert in this area things were very different that’s why I invited her to speak with our staff that deals with these so they can bring her up to date — maybe she would then be able to understand what’s going on,” Carson added.
