Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said Wednesday that his Virginia home was recently "vandalized by people who also wrote hateful rhetoric about President [Donald] Trump.”

“We were out of town, but other kind, embarrassed neighbors cleaned up most of the mess before we returned," Carson said.

Included in his statement — which he offered in light of the “racial and political strife emanating from the events in Charlottesville last weekend" — was a recollection of an incident after he and his wife purchased a farm in rural Maryland several years ago.

One of the neighbors immediately put up a Confederate flag. A friend of ours who is an African-American three-star general was coming to visit and immediately turned around concluding that he was in the wrong place. Interestingly, all the other neighbors immediately put up American flags shaming the other neighbor who took down the Confederate flag.

“In both instances, less than kind behavior was met by people taking the high road," Carson noted in his statement. "We could all learn from these examples. Hatred and bigotry unfortunately still exists in our country and we must all continue to fight it, but let's use the right tools.”

He said that the neighbor who'd raised the Confederate flag "subsequently became friendly. That is the likely outcome if we just learn to be neighborly and to get to know each other."

But CNN national political reporter Maeve Reston didn't seem convinced about Carson's statement:

And that opened up a floodgate of sarcasm from commenters:

Image source: Twitter screenshot

Image source: Twitter screenshot

(H/T: Young Conservatives)