Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took his criticism of rival Ben Carson to a new level, calling the retired neurosurgeon’s temper “pathological.”
“It’s in the book that he’s got a pathological temper or temperament,” Trump told CNN’s Erin Burnett in an interview Thursday night, specifically addressing Carson’s recently released autobiography.
“That’s a big problem because you don’t cure that. They say you don’t cure, as an example: child molester,” he continued. “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.”
In Carson’s memoir Gifted Hands, the retired doctor and top rival to Trump describes a series of violent incidents when he was a child, including striking his friend with a rock and once attempting to attack his mother with a hammer.
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Carson specifically wrote, “I had what I only can label a pathological temper — a disease — and this sickness controlled me, making me totally irrational,” before later saying he had an epiphany and changed to become who he is today.
Burnett asked Trump if he were satisfied that Carson has repeatedly said his angry temper is gone.
“I just don’t know,” he said. “You’ll have to ask him that question. Look, I hope he’s fine because I think it would be a shame. What he’s saying is these things happen. It’d be nice if he said none of these things did happen. He’s saying these things happen and therefore I have credibility. And what I’m saying is, I’d rather have them if they didn’t happen. I don’t want somebody who hit somebody in the face with a padlock.”
Trump and Carson remain neck-in-neck for the GOP presidential nomination. Trump has 24.8 percent to Carson’s 24.4 percent in a RealClearPolitics average of polls.
