Trump 'is not racist at all': Ben Carson
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson weighs in on President Trump’s feud with the 'squad.'
The growing feud between President Trump and a group of four Democratic congresswomen, known informally as "The Squad," continues after the president fired back at Rep.Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., on Twitter on Sunday.
Omar tweeted on Saturday that America needed to "end this charade" and "accept that this racist president wants every black/brown person deported and Muslims banned."
Trump responded on Sunday by tweeting that he does not believe that 'the four Congresswomen are capable of loving our country." He also tweeted that they are "destroying the Democrat Party" and are "weak and insecure people who can never destroy our country."
Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" that he does not believe Trump is racist.
"I have never seen anything that even resembles racism," he said. "And look at the policies that have been done and look at the people who have been helped."
Carson said that several of Trump's policies have helped black and Hispanic unemployment levels reach an all-time low.
"Look at the fact that he has engaged so much in second chance for people, you know things other people have talked about but he has done," Carson said. "Opportunity zones where people who have made enormous amounts of money have the opportunity to take unrealized capital gains and to plow them into the areas of the country that have traditionally been neglected."
The unemployment rate among African Americans has been declining over the past decade (currently at 6 percent), but is still higher than the national unemployment rate (3.7 percent), and comes at a time when the economy is at an all-time high, something Trump noted on Saturday.
"Economic numbers reach an all time high, the best in our Country’s history. Great to be a part of something so good for so many!" Trump tweeted.
Additionally, Carson said that the low homeownership rate among African Americans is related to the housing crisis.
"People took advantage of a lot of people who did not have a lot of wherewithal in terms of financial knowledge about housing," he said. "And by manipulating debt-to-income ratios and the various types of manipulations for credit that were done, they put people into houses they couldn't afford."
National Association of Home Builders CEO Jerry Howard on the state of the U.S. housing market.
Carson said a lot of issues arose for the people affected by this "manipulation."
"You lose your house, you lose your credit, you lose your future opportunities," he said. "We're still recovering from that. And it is very important that we do what we can to get people back into housing."