Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump launched a scathing attack on his most significant rival, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, telling an audience in Iowa on Thursday (November 12) that Carson described himself as "pathological" in his memoir.
Trump, who addressed supporters at an election rally in the key primary state, said the man with whom he has recently traded the lead in national polls was an "enigma".
"Carson's an enigma. He wrote a book, and he's doing great in Iowa. He's second in the polls. With all these professional politicians, I'm first, Carson's second, and I don't understand it, I really don't understand it. Because he wrote a book and in the book he said terrible things about himself. He said that he's pathological and that he's got basically pathological disease. Now he wrote this, I guess before he was running for office or thought that he was running for office, and I don't want a person that's got pathological disease. I don't want it," said Trump.
In his autobiography, "Gifted Hands", Carson describes himself as a troubled youth with a temper that led him to attack several of his friends and even his mother, before he turned his life around.
In Iowa on Thursday Trump compared people who are "pathological" to child molesters.
"If you're pathological there's no cure for that folks. And I did one of the shows today, and I don't to say what I said but I'll tell you anyway. 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 to talk about that cure. That's the ultimate cure. No there's two, there's death and there's the other thing. But if you're a child molester there's no cure, they can't stop you. Pathological, there's no cure. Now he said he was pathological, okay," he said.
Trump also questioned the veracity of an incident from his Carson's youth in which he claimed that he attempted to stab a friend, but that his knife broke on this friend's belt buckle.
"Now here's the beauty of all - he took a knife and he went after a friend and he lunged, he lunged that knife into the stomach of his friends, but low and behold it hit the belt, it hit the belt, and the knife broke. Give me a break, give me a break, give me a break," he said.
Carson has bristled at news media attempts to confirm the stabbing incident and other accounts in his autobiography, saying he is being unfairly targeted.
Real estate mogul Trump also attacked the news media, pointing to the press at his Iowa rally and calling them "scum" and "garbage".
"I may leave here and you may say oh that was not nice what he said. Who cares? Then, you know, I go back to my life, I don't have to do interviews, which I don't like doing to be honest with you. I can leave this scum back here, the press, alone, I don't need 'em anymore. They're garbage, no they're scum. I don't have to deal with 'em anymore," he said.
Trump, who has been critical of U.S. President Barack Obama's strategy on Syria, told his supporter tonight that unlike Obama, he would have no trouble with Russia's bombing campaign.
"So he can't be a friend of… this was a Russian plane. They can't be a friend of ISIS [The Islamic State]. So if Putin wants to bomb I say 'go ahead, go ahead, bomb'. And we can bomb too."
Using profanity to emphasize his point, Trump said he would bomb the oil fields controlled by the Islamic State, which he referred to as ISIS.
"ISIS is making a tremendous amount of money because they have certain oil caps, right? They have certain areas of oil that they took away, they have some in Syria, some in Iraq. I would bomb the shit out of 'em," he said.
Also on Thursday President Barack Obama said Trump's controversial plan for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants is unrealistic, and described it as antithetical to the American character.
Also on HuffPost:
