Housing and Urban Development Secretary Dr. Ben Carson called out the “foolishness” of political correctness Tuesday when he was asked to apologize for referring to transgender women as “big, hairy men.”

Carson was being questioned by Democratic Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D-Va.) at a House Financial Services Committee hearing on affordable housing.

“First of all I didn’t describe transgender women that way,” Carson said. “I was relating a story that a woman’s group told me about big hairy men -- who are not transgender women by the way -- coming into their facility and having to be accepted because of the rules that were in place.”

“So you don’t feel the need to apologize for those comments,” Wexton asked.

With there obviously being no reason to apologize, Carson made this statement:

“No, I think this whole concept of political correctness — you can say this, you can’t say that, you can’t repeat what someone said — is total foolishness, and it’s going to destroy our nation. And we need to be more mature than that,” he said.