In 2009, Ben Carson delivered a commencement address at Lafayette College, speaking immediately after Holocaust survivor and scholar Nechema Tec received an honorary degree.
Carson began his speech by criticizing political correctness and expressing anger that people are always getting offended.
Naturally, Carson used a Holocaust joke as an example of why people should stop taking things so seriously:
I was talking to a group one time about the difference between a human brain and a dog’s brain and a man got offended. He said, ‘You can’t talk about dogs like that.’ I was talking to another group about how the fashion industry has gotten the young ladies to think they’re supposed to be so skinny they look like they’ve escaped from a concentration camp and a Jewish man got offended. He said, ‘You can’t mention concentration camps, that’s too delicate, it would be as if I said something to you about slavery.’ I told him, ‘You can mention slavery all you want, it doesn’t bother me.’
Carson, now President Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, has frequently compared the United States under the Obama administration to Germany under Nazi rule, and once suggested that President Obama was driven by “Mein Kampf.”
The Trump administration drew criticism this week for releasing a statement commemorating the Holocaust that failed to mention Jews.
