Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump questioned how voters could support Ben Carson, who has admitted to attempting to stab a friend and threatening his mother before converting to Christianity.
Trump also seemed to be open to the possibility that Carson may have fabricated some of his life story.
Questions about Carson’s biography came to light through a CNN investigation in which they spoke to some friends from Carson’s youth, who say he was always an honest kid and they don’t remember a violent temper.
“Why would anybody know about, you know, private incidents like that? You know, I was generally a nice person, it’s just that I had a very bad temper,” Carson told CNN.
The Carson story is either a total fabrication or, if true, even worse-trying to hit mother over the head with a hammer or stabbing friend!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2015
With Ben Carson wanting to hit his mother on head with a hammer, stabb a friend and Pyramids built for grain storage – don't people get it?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2015
Carson now admits his friend named "Bob," who he tried to stabb (Bob was saved by his belt buckle!), no longer exists as Bob. Wrong name!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 6, 2015
Carson has told the story often about growing up with a poor single mother in Detroit, but says he changed the names of the people on the receiving end of his anger to protect their privacy, which explains why the media has been unable to track them down.
“Why would you be able to find them?” Carson asked. “What makes you think you would be able to find them, unless I tell you who they are? If they come forward on their own because of your story, that’s fine. But I’m not going to expose them.”
In his 1990 autobiography “Gifted Hands,” Carson wrote that in a fit of rage, he grabbed a knife and attempted to stab a friend, but that the blade struck his friend’s belt buckle. He also said he once threatened his mother with a hammer.
Carson told a church audience in Iowa he was an angry child and expected to die in his 20s. Then, locked in a bathroom for three hours with a Bible, he was changed. “When I came out, my temper was gone, and I’ve never had a problem since,” he said.
Trump has stepped up his attacks after Carson pulled ahead of Trump in several recent polls, calling into question Carson’s fitness for office due to his calm demeanor.
Carson called these latest accusations “garbage” and part of a “smear campaign.”
“I’m not going to play that game with them. They can do it all they want. They’re going to go back and try to find anything that I’ve ever said, and try to get me on the defensive about it in order to distract away from the things that are important,” Carson told Fox News Channel’s Megyn Kelly.