This weekend, The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Lynne Patton, a HUD official, appointed by President Trump and called a “prop” by Democratic opposition because she is black and a supporter of the President. After Patton made news by glaring at Michael Cohen during his testimony on Capitol Hill, Rashida Tlaib commented, “Just because someone has a person of color, a black person, working for them, does not mean they aren’t racist. Some would even say . . . the fact that someone would actually use a prop—a black woman—in this chamber, in this committee, is alone racist in itself.”

Patton’s response? ““The biggest racism to me is the ideology that, again, black people can’t be independent thinkers, that they can’t vote for a party other than the Democratic Party.”

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Patton’s story is amazing and what she is doing through her work at HUD is amazing. She is a recovering addict who credits her recovery to the Trump family. Working for the Trump organization, Eric and his then fiancée noticed her problem and coordinated an intervention. She struggled with relapse until Inauguration Day: “I’ve never said this before, but the Trump presidency—his decision to run for president—saved my life. The Trump family thinks that I stopped doing drugs a lot earlier than I did. But when I saw him come down the escalator, and I was in the rare position to be there on Day One, that’s when it hit me that this was no longer about me—that this is about something greater, and that I can’t embarrass him. . . . From that day on, I did no drugs.”

At HUD, she has a “housing first” perspective on addiction treatment: “It’s important to shelter homeless people before expecting them to conquer addictions. It’s hard enough to recover, even as a wealthy person” but imagine how difficult it is for “somebody who has no home, no job, no stability, no money.”

How Patton really made headlines is by living in HUD-funded housing in New York City and chronicling her experience on Twitter. She found inhumane conditions and deeply broken bureaucracy perpetuating those conditions. She describes the conditions with salty, PG-13 language, but the facts are poignant nonetheless–huge rats, faulty wiring, insufficient plumbing, fire hazards galore, and more.

She has wise words to share about Black Americans and the Republican party: “Black culture is, by nature, largely conservative. You’re raised to go to church; you’re raised not to have sex before marriage. When you look across the country at the most destitute cities in the nation—Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore—you’re talking about cities that have been run by Democrats for decades.”

Pray for Lynne Patton and send her the prayer–click below: