Ben Carson claims it's 'very immature' to impeach Trump

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson defended his boss on Monday, claiming that the decision to impeach Donald Trump was “very immature.”

Trump was impeached last week on two articles, abuse of power and obstruction of Congress related to his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, and his decision to withhold critical aid to the country to secure such investigations.

In a CBS News interview this week, Carson said he had encouraged Trump to avoid “giving up” in the wake of those impeachment proceedings.

Carson was also asked if he had any reason to doubt the numerous career civil servants who came forward to accuse Trump of demanding the investigations and withholding the security aid, intended to help Ukraine defend itself against Russia.

Carson said that he did doubt that their veracity but suggested they may have been inherently unfair.

“Well, I’m mean, they’re people,” he explained. “Do people have various reasons for doing things that are not fair? Of course they do. What we really need to be thinking about is the whole concept of fairness.”

Carson, a former neurosurgeon and 2016 Republican presidential candidate, has been a staunch defender of Trump despite Trump’s own treatment of him.

Carson was ultimately unsuccessful in his bid for the 2016 Republican nomination. During that campaign, Trump mocked passages of Carson’s autobiography, in which Carson discussed his temper, and likened his issues to those of a pedophile.

“He said he’s got a pathological disease. He actually said pathological temper. And then he defined it as disease. So he said he has pathological disease. Now. If you’re pathological, there’s no cure for that, folks,” Trump said in a November 2015 campaign rally.

Earlier that day, Trump had told CNN, “It’s in the book that he’s got a pathological temper. That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that … as an example: child molesting. You don’t cure these people. You don’t cure a child molester. There’s no cure for it. Pathological, there’s no cure for that.”

During the rally that night, Trump referred to those earlier comments, adding, “I said that if you’re a child molester, a sick puppy, you’re a child molester, there’s no cure for that. There’s only one cure — we don’t want to talk about that cure. That’s the ultimate cure. Well, there’s two, there’s death, and the other thing.”

Despite those comments, and his own admitted reluctance to do so, Carson endorsed Trump in March of 2016. He said that the move came after Trump promised him a position in his administration.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.