Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, a Democrat who has praised Barack Obama for his efforts to “improve policing” in America and lauded him by saying “he’s hip, he’s a smooth president,” decided to flatter a GOP candidate for president on Monday, praising Ben Carson in Sacramento at a gathering of Johnson’s “Indivizible” African-American empowerment organization.
The Sacramento Bee reported that roughly 325 people heard Johnson declare, “Our goal should be the best that we can be. And when you strive for excellence, and you become excellent, nobody ever cares where you’re from or what you look like or the color of your skin….And the person that to me best represented that was Dr. Ben Carson.”
Johnson, a close friend of the Obamas, has not praised any other GOP candidate.
Johnson lauded Carson’s history, noting his “impressive” education and his presidential Medal of Freedom.
Carson, a famed neurosurgeon, attended Yale and the medical school at the University of Michigan. He became the youngest-ever division head at Johns Hopkins University, leading the department of pediatric neurosurgery.
When Johnson criticized Carson for saying that Obamacare was the worst thing since slavery, saying, “I think people felt the way you said that was not proper or deferential or with respect,” Carson backtracked, according to the Bee.
“You probably noticed over the last few months that I am not nearly as inflammatory as I used to be. Because what I’ve discovered is that when you say certain things people actually can’t hear what you’re saying,” Carson was quoted as saying.