Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has unleashed a stunning verbal assault on his nearest competitor Ben Carson, saying that U.S. voters were “stupid” to believe the doctor’s moving personal narrative and comparing him to a paedophile.
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It didn’t always used to be like this, though.
“I can not hit him”.
“It’s not the kind of dialogue that I would ever engage in”, he told reporters in SC.
He made the comments in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett Wednesday evening, and then followed up with a tirade during a Thursday night Iowa rally.
Dr Carson’s ability to overcome his anger and an impoverished childhood to become a world-renowned neurosurgeon has been a central part of his personal story.
Trump remains ahead of Carson on social media sentiment, according to Thomson Reuters data.
At the second GOP debate, everything seemed to have been smoothed over.
Donald Trump’s rivals for the Republican presidential nod are not taking kindly to Thursday’s surprisingly insult-laden – even by Trump standards – speech.
But things quickly took a turn for the worse. On October 24 Trump expressed skepticism about Carson’s faith (Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist) contrasting it with his own “middle of the road” Presbyterian beliefs.
“He goes into the bathroom for a couple of hours, and he comes out, and now he’s religious”, Trump said.
“That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that…as an example: child molesting”. “I don’t expect it to change any time soon but I don’t have to get into it”.
Mr Trump’s campaign released an online video on Friday that continued to question Dr Carson’s account. Then here’s the beauty of all: He took a knife, and he went after a friend, and he lodged that knife into the stomach of a friend, but – lo and behold! – it hit the belt.
“Give me a break”, he said, arguing that a knife could easily circumvent a buckle.
“If you’re pathological, there’s no cure for that”, Trump said.
Trump mocked Carson’s anecdote about his attempt to stab another boy, which was thwarted by the victim’s belt buckle.
“I would bomb the sh*t out of them”, he said. “Believe me it ain’t gonna work”, he said.
On global affairs, Carson said that if he were in a meeting with Russian Vladimir Putin, he would tell him that “we are a peaceful nation, but we are not a marshmallow”.
“His supporters say, ‘Ya, he’s telling it like it is, and he’s being honest.’ None of this political babble you hear from regular candidates on the other hand what he said was rather astounding”, Goldford said.
For one thing it had the startling effect of making the Zen-like Carson look presidential. But maybe the relationship between the two candidates hasn’t always been so civil after all.
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There he was on an Iowa stage for 95 minutes, swearing, threatening and degradingly scathing Ben Carson, the rival whose popularity baffles Trump in light of Trump’s certified greatness. “He’d be better off for it”, said Donna Reams, of Des Moines.
