Donald Trump called Ben Carson “pathological” several times yesterday — even comparing the pathology to child molesters — and asked “how stupid are the people of Iowa” to be favoring the neurosurgeon in polls.
In a CNN interview, Trump first said he likes Carson and gets along with him well. “I’m not bringing up anything that’s not in his book,” he said.
“And you know, when he says he went after his mother and wanted to hit her in the head with a hammer, that bothers me. I mean, that’s pretty bad. When he says he’s pathological and he says that in the book, I don’t say that. And again, I’m not saying anything. I’m not saying anything other than pathological is a very serious disease and he said he’s pathological,” Trump continued. “Somebody said he has a pathological disease. Other people said he said in the book and I haven’t seen it. I know it’s in the book — that he has got a pathological temper or temperament. That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that. That’s like, you know, I could say, they’ve say you don’t cure — as an example, a child molester, 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. Now, I didn’t say it. He said it in his book. So when I hear somebody’s pathological, when somebody says, I went after my mother with — and he’s saying it about himself with a hammer and hit her in the head, I say, whoa. I never did. You never did. I don’t know anybody that ever did personally. But that’s a big statement. When he says he hit a friend of his in the face with a lock — with a padlock right in the face, I say, whoa, that’s pretty bad. And when he said he stabbed somebody with a knife but it hit a belt buckle, I know a lot about knives and belt buckles.”
Trump maintained that a belt buckle is not going to stop a knife — Carson’s story says his weapon broke when it struck his friend’s belt buckle, sparing his target from injury — as “belt buckles are not going to stop it because they are going to turn.”
“They’re going to, you know, they are not solid, especially if somebody has got a couple of extra pounds on. You know, they move. There’s a lot of movement. … He’s pathological, you’ll have to ask him that question. Look, I hope it’s fine because I think it would be a shame. But think of it, what he’s saying is these things happened. It would be nice if he said, no, none of these things did happen. He’s saying, these things happened and therefore I have credibility. And what I’m saying is, I would rather have them if they didn’t happen. I don’t want somebody that hit somebody in the face really hard with a padlock. I don’t want somebody that went after his mother with a hammer. I don’t want somebody, frankly — I didn’t read his book but, according to the book, he said he’s pathological. That’s a very serious term.”
In a 95-minute speech in Fort Dodge, Iowa, last night Trump flipped his belt buckle to illustrate his argument. “So I have a belt: Somebody hits me with a belt, it’s going in because the belt moves this way. It moves this way, it moves that way,” Trump told the crowd. “He hit the belt buckle. Anybody have a knife? Want to try it on me? Believe me, it ain’t gonna work. You’re going to be successful, but he took the knife and went like this and he plunged it into the belt and, amazing, the belt stayed totally flat and the knife broke.”
Carson has surged ahead of Trump in Iowa polling, then dipped back down with a CNN poll last week showing Trump ahead of Carson by two points.
“How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” Trump asked.
The GOP frontrunner also promised to “bomb the s—” out of oil fields in terrorist-held areas (“I know more about ISIS than the generals do — believe me”), called Carly Fiorina “Carly whatever-the-hell-her-name-is,” and said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is “weak like a baby.”
“If I did the stuff he said he did, I wouldn’t be here right now. It would have been over. It would have been over. It would have been totally over,” Trump said of Carson’s past. “And that’s who’s in second place. And I don’t get it.”
He raised again the child molester comparison. “A child molester, there’s no cure for that,” Trump said. “If you’re a child molester, there’s no cure. They can’t stop you. Pathological? There’s no cure.”
“He goes into the bathroom for a couple of hours and he comes out and now he’s religious. And the people of Iowa believe him. Give me a break. Give me a break. It doesn’t happen that way. It doesn’t happen that way. … Don’t be fools, OK?”
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