REAL-ESTATE MOGUL Donald Trump went all out against his presidential rival Ben Carson during an epic speech in Fort Dodge, Iowa this week.
Among other things, Trump doubled down on his comparison of what he has called Carson’s incurable “pathological temper” to child molesters, while both reenacting and questioning Carson’s history of violent incidents as a young teenager.
“How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” Trump asked his supporters of Carson, the only Republican challenging his number one position in the primary polls.
“So here’s the good news: he’s now saying all of that stuff happened!” Trump said in his Thursday tirade.
“Because otherwise he’s a liar.”
‘Sick puppy’
Trump was referring to Carson’s memoir ‘Gifted Hands’ in which the retired neurosurgeon described a series of decades-old attacks by him against his family and friends.
In the past two weeks, Trump has repeatedly homed in on the part of the book in which Carson wrote, “I had what I only can label a pathological temper — a disease — and this sickness controlled me, making me totally irrational”.
Carson said he later had an epiphany and became the famously soft-spoken man he is today.
But Trump apparently thinks Carson never got better. The business mogul generated headlines earlier on Thursday when he provocatively compared Carson’s “pathological” temper to incurable child molesters during a CNN interview.
He doubled down on that comparison during his speech that night.
“I don’t want to say what I said, but I’ll tell you anyway,” Trump told his supporters. “I said that if you’re a child molester — a sick puppy, you’re a child molester — there’s no cure for that. There’s only one cure; we don’t want to talk about that cure. That’s the ultimate cure. No there’s two there’s death and the other thing. But if you’re a child molester, there’s no cure. They can’t stop you.”
‘A damaged camper’
Trump pointed to three of Carson’s claimed violent teenage incidents in particular: attempting to attack his mother with a hammer, hitting someone with a padlock, and trying to stab a friend.
“So he’s a pathological, damaged camper,” Trump continued.
“A problem. Then they talk about my tone ‘is a little tough.’ Give me a break. Go back to Carson. So he went after his mother — went after his mother! Think of this. He went after his mother with a hammer at a fairly young age, 14, 15 years old. I didn’t. I didn’t.”
But at the same time, Trump expressed disbelief at Carson’s 50-year-old stories, including that a friend’s belt buckle had stopped Carson’s camping knife from sinking in.
Trump reenacted a young Carson to mock the stories, and at one point he walked away from the podium to show how ridiculous he felt the stabbing story was.
“Give me a break, the knife broke,” he said.
“The belt moves this way. It moves this way! It moves that way! He hits a belt buckle! … Believe me, it ain’t gonna to work … But he took the knife, he went like this! And he plunged it into the belt! And amazingly, the belt stayed totally flat and the knife broke.”
And Trump discounted how Carson could have had an epiphany had he truly been as violent as his book described.
“He goes into the bathroom for a couple hours, and comes out, and now he’s religious,” Trump said.
“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.”
He added:
“Some people might not like it: ‘Oh, that’s not really nice what you say.’ Don’t be fools. Don’t be fools, OK?”
For its part, Carson’s campaign fired back after Trump’s initial “child molester” comparison by dismissing the idea that its candidate has some kind of incurable disease. His campaign also pointed to his recent rise in the polls to explain why Trump started lashing out at Carson:
- Colin Campbell for Business Insider
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say