Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said Wednesday it’s not for him to say whether retired neurosurgeon and 2016 GOP rival Ben Carson is qualified to be president but that he’d let Mr. Carson operate on a friend of his or run one of his companies.
Speaking from New Hampshire, Mr. Trump said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” he thought Mr. Carson was “good” in Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate in Milwaukee. The two men have managed to put some distance between themselves and the rest of the GOP field in recent public polling.
When pointed out that he largely held his fire during the debate after being critical of Mr. Carson on the campaign trail in recent days, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t want to be critical.”
“I like him, to start off with — I do, I like him,” he said. “I don’t want to be critical.”
Mr. Trump said he and Mr. Carson have gotten along “very well.”
Asked if Mr. Carson is qualified to be president of the United States, Mr. Trump said: “Well, I don’t want to say. … That’s not for me to say.”
Asked if he would let Mr. Carson run one of his companies, Mr. Trump said: “I would let him operate on a friend of mine. Not necessarily me, but a friend.”
Asked again if he would let the retired doctor run one of his companies, he said: “Sure, if you’re talking about a company … sure.”
“I am being nice,” he said.
Mr. Trump has mentioned Mr. Carson’s past bouts with violence when the retired doctor was much younger, such as when Mr. Carson tried to stab someone as a teenager but hit the person’s belt buckle instead — an incident Mr. Carson has described as a turning point in his life.
“I think faith is very important,” Mr. Trump said, pointing out that he’s Presbyterian. “I don’t want to really get into it with Ben because I have a very good relationship, but he wrote a whole thing about, you know, with a hammer and going after his mother with a hammer and hitting people in the face with locks and things like that.”
Mr. Trump acknowledged that such incidents Mr. Carson has described are tied to how faith helped him turn things around in his life.
“No, I know, I know,” he said. “But they’re pretty severe. I never went after my mother with a hammer, that I can tell you. And if I did, I was in big trouble.”
“I mean, he wrote about it. I’m not telling anything new,” he said. “But I thought it was sort of a strange situation.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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