Dr. Ben Carson, the retired neurosurgeon-turned-presidential candidate-turned-perpetually confused Trump surrogate, returned to the political arena Tuesday night with a bizarre six-minute speech at the Republican National Convention in which he first railed against the dangers of political correctness, and then, as if to prove his point, linked Hillary Clinton to Lucifer himself.

“Now, one of the things that I have learned about Hillary Clinton is that one of her heroes, her mentors was Saul Alinsky,” said Carson, departing from his prepared remarks that were sent to the press ahead of time. “And her senior thesis was about Saul Alinsky. This was someone she greatly admired. And let me tell you something about Saul Alinsky. So he wrote a book called Rules for Radicals. It acknowledges Lucifer, the original radical who gained his own kingdom.”

Carson, a prominent figure in the evangelical community, went on: “Now think about that,” he said. “This is our nation where our founding document, the Declaration of Independence, talks about certain inalienable rights that come from our creator; a nation where our Pledge of Allegiance says we are one nation under God. This is a nation where every coin in our pockets and every bill in our wallet says ‘In God We Trust.’ So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?”

“So are we willing to elect someone as president who has as their role model somebody who acknowledges Lucifer?”

Carson, whose anti-Lucifer position cannot be denied, won a rapturous response from what remained of the Republican crowd in the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. “Think about that,” he admonished, once again.

Trump, meanwhile, a thrice-married tabloid star and reportedly ungenerous billionaire, is untouched by the mark of the beast, it seems. “If we continue to allow them to take God out of our lives, God will remove himself from us, we will not be blessed and our nation will go down the tubes and we will be responsible for that,” Carson said of the devilry that is secular progressivism. “We don't want that to happen. Now Donald Trump, he understands this very well.”

If Carson’s remarks were bizarre, they weren’t out of character. This was, after all, the man who left Iowa during the primary to fly to Florida to pick up fresh laundry; who compared a good Supreme Court nominee to fruit salad; and whose book tour-cum-presidential campaign [collapsed] (http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/01/ben-carson-finance-chair-resignation) under the weight of its own financial foibles. The most befuddling moment of his campaign, however, came when he endorsed Trump, a man who once compared him to a “pathological” child molester.

Trump’s advisers were likely crossing their fingers backstage, hoping that Carson would not say something that accidentally undermined the billionaire, as he has done repeatedly. Carson, who endorsed Trump in March and has been a surrogate ever since, at one point admitted that if Trump’s presidency was a disaster, “it’s only four years,” and later pondered if there were “better candidates” out there. He continued to unconsciously insult Trump several more times, before fading from the media’s attention as they focused on Chris Christie’s own uncomfortable second career as a Trump surrogate. In a speech that could have been a disaster, it must have been a relief that Carson’s meandering thoughts went straight to hell, and not somewhere closer to home.