Ben Carson has been circumspect in his public reaction to Donald Trump’s nine-minute attack on Carson at a speech in Iowa Thursday night. “Now that he’s completed his gratuitous attack, why don’t we press on and deal with the real issues,” Carson said in South Carolina Friday. “That’s what the people of America are concerned about, not so much politics as usual, politics of personal destruction — that’s what the American people are sick and tired of.”

But inside the Carson campaign, the reaction to Trump is much stronger. The feeling among top aides is that no reasonable person could watch Trump’s monologue and not conclude Trump is crazy and that his campaign is imploding. The campaign, and Carson, decided to stick with a policy of non-engagement because they believe Trump is self-destructing and they don’t want to get in the way.