Like most members of Donald Trump’s Cabinet, Ben Carson was hired to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development with virtually no relevant experience whatsoever. And if a surreal hearing on Capitol Hill is any indication, he hasn’t gotten up to speed in the last two-plus years re: the basic functions of the agency he oversees, whose work impacts millions of Americans. In fact, it seems like he may actually be regressing in his knowledge, to the point that he could very well be unable to explain what HUD stands for by the end of 2019—as in, what the actual acronym stands for, not the agency’s mission, which was seemingly lost on the former neurosurgeon some time ago.

On Tuesday, Rep. Katie Porter began a line of questioning about the alarming rates of foreclosure at HUD by askingCarson, “Do you know what an R.E.O. is?” The question was seemingly intended to be rhetorical, like asking a bank C.E.O., “do you know what a mortgage-backed security is?” and then cutting off their “Yes ma’am” to launch into a monologue about how the instrument, and banker greed, caused the financial crisis. Except in this case the answer was apparently No, if you can believe it, I literally have no clue.

“An Oreo?” Carson asked.

“No, not an Oreo,” Porter responded, spelling it out slowly for him like a small child. “An R-E-O. R.E.O.”

“Real estate . . . ” Carson started before pausing, dragging out the cringe-inducing back-and-forth for another interminable minute.

“What’s the O stand for?” Porter asked, to which Carson answered, “organization.” Which wasn’t right!

“Owned, real estate owned,” Porter replied, explaining, “That’s what happens when a property goes to foreclosure, we call it an R.E.O.”

Supporters of the administration and its inept employees will surely be claiming this was some kind of gotcha moment that doesn’t reflect Carson’s deep understanding of federal housing policy, which would be a convincing argument if not for the fact that “R.E.O.” is a common, everyday term used in the field in which Carson currently works. (In a past life, this would be kind of like Carson not being able to point where the medulla oblongata is located.) Despite his failure to demonstrate even a basic knowledge of what HUD does, however, the doctor has done a semi-reasonable job by Trumpian standards when it comes to chipping away at the agency‘s mission from the inside, rolling back an Obama-era housing rule and attempting to triple the rent on America’s poorest households, not to mention increasing the number of health and safety violations in public housing properties while advocating for deeper budget cuts. And on Tuesday, after confusing a real-estate term for a sandwich cookie, Carson provided some further insight into the administration‘s plans to go to war against the people it’s supposed to be helping: