Did Ben Carson Almost Leave HUD?!

HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson reportedly recently considered leaving the Trump administration when negotiating the agency’s budget with the White House. The NYTreports that people close to Carson said that the Secretary was frustrated by Trump’s deep cuts to HUD and had to negotiate for an extra $2 billion. “He was ready to walk — he would have walked,” said Mr. Carson’s longtime business manager and political advisor, Armstrong Williams. The paper has a profile of Carson’s tenure thus far, which also touches on his seeming lack of influence on the president -- who reportedly views the former brain surgeon as a beta “winner,” not as a “killer,” according to WH aides. For his part, Carson told the NYT that “[t]here are more complexities here than in brain surgery … Doing this job is going to be a very intricate process.” The entire must-read piece is here.