Businessman Donald Trump put it succinctly when asked during a Monday morning interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America” about stories involving Ben Carson: “It’s a very strange situation.”

Over the weekend, Carson criticized Trump for “jumping the gun” following reports that shed doubt on the retired neurosurgeon’s biography, including his supposedly violent childhood.

ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pressed Trump about his attacks on Carson.

“Well, I’ll just simply say and mean it to the bottom, you know, the case was made that he went after his mother with a hammer, and he wanted to hit his mother over the head with a hammer, that he stabbed somebody, that he had hit somebody in the face with a lock. He smashed somebody’s face with a lock, with a padlock and other things and I’m saying, he’s trying to justify this because he wants to be telling the truth and he’s trying to justify it and then he said he’s pathological,” Trump said.

Trump said Carson’s self-proclaimed “pathological temper” was hard to stomach.

“You hit somebody in the face with a lock and go after your mother with a hammer, you do all of these things and you’re trying to justify that, yes, you did them and that’s supposed to make you credible,” he said of his soft-spoken opponent.

Trump and Carson have traded the top two slots in the Republican polls and will face off in the debate on Fox Business Network in Milwaukee, Wis., at 9 p.m. EST.

Listen to Trump, from ABC, below:



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