A year ago, Trump ripped Ben Carson as a friend-stabbing conspiracy theorist. Now he wants him for his Cabinet.

Donald Trump and Ben Carson.
(Image credit: Getty Images)

What a difference a year can make. On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump tapped the man he criticized in November 2015 for "wanting to hit his mother on the head with a hammer" to serve as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development:

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Trump's criticism of retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson wasn't confined to a single tweet either. Shortly after that, Trump claimed Carson, then a competitor in the Republican presidential primary, had a "pathological temper" that could not be cured. "You don't cure these people. You don't cure a child molester. There's no cure for it. Pathological, there's no cure for that," Trump said, likening Carson to a pedophile.

While Trump apparently thought Carson's self-reported attempt to stab a friend when he was a teenager and theory that the Egyptian pyramids were actually built to store grain made him a questionable pick for GOP presidential candidate, he seems to be letting bygones be bygones.

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Carson, who previously expressed concerns he wasn't experienced enough to run a government agency, will be tasked with enforcing fair housing laws, overseeing federal public housing programs, and assisting with financing for homeownership.

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