These sorts of things only happen to Ben Carson.

The former neurosurgeon, current Trump official with a Sean Spicer-esque grasp on slavery and, of course, the leader of our Department of Housing and Urban Development got stuck in a Miami elevator today.

And not just any elevator.

No, an elevator clearly in need of maintenance in a facility Donald Trump's budget would likely defund. Let’s not forget that the president’s financial plan called not just for eradicating the National Endowment for the Arts, but also for cutting $6.2 billion from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

You see, as part of a push to sell the president’s budget, and also to learn what the Department of Housing and Urban Development does, exactly, Carson is on a poverty tour that he’s calling a “listening tour.”

According to the New York Daily News, Carson stopped off this morning at an affordable housing complex in Miami, Florida to take pictures with the facility’s happy residents and, one supposes, to listen to their stories while thinking about how to one up Sean Spicer’s outrageous comments on the Holocaust.

As the secretary moved about the building, the elevator he was in stopped. He was stuck inside for about 20 minutes before Miami’s firefighters rescued him.

Carson himself supposedly spent time in low-income housing as a youth, but has reportedly since called such facilities “communist.” Hopefully his experience today doesn’t further sour him against housing for those less fortunate than he.

Seeing as Carson shook the dust of the complex off his suit and segued immediately into a rendezvous with Miami Heat player Alonzo Mourning after being rescued, we’re not overly optimistic that the experience softened the secretary’s heart. 

But who knows? As we’ve seen over the last few months, in the Trump administration, anything is possible.

Ben-CarsonDepartment-of-Housing-And-Urban-DevelopmentDonald trumpLow Income housingMiamiSean Spicer