Dr. Ben Carson’s business manager Armstrong Williams had an interesting admission for the public, considering Carson convinced many of them to vote for him for president in the GOP primaries: after Carson allegedly turned down the offer to become the Secretary of Education and Health and Human Services, Williams said of Carson, “his background didn’t prepare him to run a federal agency.”
Williams told Circa that Carson thought he could “best serve the President outside the administration.”
Carson had his own message on Facebook:
Williams told The Hill:
Dr. Carson was never offered a specific position, but everything was open to him. Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.
Carson was coy with The Washington Post about whether he was offered a post or not, saying, “I was offered things, there’s no question about that. I don’t want to go into the details.” The Post added, “Carson noted that he has a strong working relationship with Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s controversial pick to be chief strategist at the White House. Bannon is ‘a very smart and wise counselor,’ Carson said. ‘He’s the big-picture person.’”
In an interview with Business Insider just before the election, Carson stated:
I don’t want to be a part of the administration. Not that I have anything against it. Just that I think my voice will actually be more valuable outside the administration. There are so many issues that affect our country right now, and we can’t lose sight of them. So winning the election is really just step one. I’ll continue to write, continue to speak publicly, and work on helping to focus us as a nation on what’s really important.