Maxine Waters tosses another insult at Ben Carson — here's what she said

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) continued her mockery of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson while speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Town Hall on Civil Rights Thursday in Washington, D.C.

What did she say?

"Look at Ben Carson. My God. My grandmother would call him an educated fool," she said.

"Here's a man who has a reputation of being a highly competent surgeon," she added, "but when he talks about poor people, he says they're the cause of their poverty. He doesn't understand why you didn't do what he did and why you didn't make it like he made it. And he doesn't know the difference between slavery and immigration."

What was she referring to?

Carson was castigated by the left for saying in May that poverty was a "state of mind." While he was trying to explain that many poor people put mental obstacles in their own way to keep them from succeeding, the left, like Waters, made it appear that he was blaming poor people for their economic condition.

Waters also referred to another controversial statement from March, when Carson compared immigrants to slaves.

Has she insulted Ben Carson before?

Waters has been mocking Carson for weeks, calling him a "white-wing nationalist," saying she would "tear his a** apart," and also threatening that she would "take him apart."

Why is this important?

As the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Finances, Waters will be questioning Carson when he testifies before the committee. And she has already said she aims to attack him as vehemently as possible.

"He's coming before my committee. If you think I took Mnuchin on, you watch what I'm going to do to Ben Carson," she said, referring to Secretary Treasury Steven Mnuchin.