Donald Trump says Ben Carson “is going to have to explain a lot of things away” from his youth, referencing the doctor’s “pathological disease,” the hammer incident with his mother, an incident involving a lock, and the stabbing of a friend.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” with Chuck Todd, Trump explained, “I think everyone is a threat to me. I look at all of the people, I like a lot of them. I respect a lot of them. I think everybody is a threat.” (RELATED: Carson: I’m Only Getting Vetted This Intensely Because I’m A Threat To The ‘Secular Progressive Movement’ [VIDEO])
When asked by Todd if the investigation into Carson “matters,” Trump said, “Well I feel baldly for Ben. I’ve gotten to like Ben. It’s a tough thing. I mean he writes where he went after his mother, hit her in the head or wanted to hit her in the head with a hammer, hitting a friend in the face with a lock, with a padlock hard in the face, stabbing somebody, only to be broken up by a belt buckle.”
“Which if you know about belt buckles, they turn and they twist. I don’t think they are going to stop a knife with the force of a strong man,” Trump said. “And you know when he writes that he has ‘pathological disease’ in a book, now he obviously wrote this book prior to thinking about running for office I assume. But he said that he has ‘pathological disease.'”
Todd interjected, “So you don’t believe him?”
Trump explained, “Well if you have pathological disease, that’s a problem. He wrote it, I didn’t write it. But you know he is going to have to explain a lot of things away. The scholarship situation, the dinner with Westmorland when Westmorland wasn’t there and the pyramids. You know the pyramids a solid structure essentially, other than a little area for the pharaoh and when you know, you don’t put grain in a pyramid because it’s a solid, they didn’t have large structural beams in those days–“
Todd replied, “You’ve done a political trick here, you have referenced every negative connotation that you could pick up on, on Dr. Carson. One, you obviously believe that he is a threat to your standing in the polls. Number two, you believe these are pretty serious.”
Trump explained, “Well I think everyone is a threat to me. I look at all of the people, I like a lot of them. I respect a lot of them. I think everybody is a threat. But nobody is going to be able to do that job I do. Nobody is going to make America great again, nobody is going to take away jobs from China and bring them back to this country and other places like India and many other places and nobody is going to be able to do that.”
“And so but what I view in terms of the election, I view I’m number one in the polls. I was number one as you know qualifying for the Fox debate. I’m number one, I’m in the poll position as the call it but I think everybody is a threat.”