Trump reserved his greatest theatrics for his opponent's description of attacking a classmate with a knife. | AP Photo Trump lays into Carson in 9-minute rant: 'How stupid are the people of Iowa?'

For nearly nine minutes of his 95-minute speech to a Fort Dodge, Iowa, audience on Thursday evening, Donald Trump laid into Ben Carson, his closest GOP rival, questioning key components of his biography of personal redemption and reenacting his stories in an unorthodox attempt to question them.

"I don't understand it. I really don't understand it," Trump began, discussing Carson's rise in the polls, remarking that the retired neurosurgeon had said "terrible things about himself" in his book, referring to his 1990 best-selling biography "Gifted Hands."


Carson wrote that he was "pathological" and that he had "pathological disease," Trump remarked, noting that the retired neurosurgeon said those things long before deciding to run for the White House.

"And I don't want a person that's got pathological disease, I don't want it. Now, I'm not saying he's got it. He said it," he clarified. "This isn't something I'm saying — he's a pathological liar, I'm not saying it. He said he's got pathological disease. He actually said 'pathological temper,' and then he defined it as 'disease,' so he said he has 'pathological disease.' Now if you're pathological, there's no cure for that, folks. OK? There's no cure for that."

Hours earlier, Trump compared Carson's "pathological temper" to that of child molesters on CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront.

"That's a big problem because you don't cure that ... as an example: child molesting," he said. "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."

He repeated the line to this Iowa crowd, remarking, "There's only one cure [for child molesters] ... We don't want to talk about that cure."

"Well there's two, there's death and the other thing," he continued.

Carson said he went after his mother with a hammer, Trump noted, recounting a moment of Carson's life story in which he said he acted out of his "pathological temper."

"And I said, 'Wow, that's tough.' Man, did anybody in this audience ever go after your mother to hit her on the head with a hammer. OK?" he said. "So he went after his mother, this is in his book, this isn't me! I'm just trying to save you the cost of a book!"

"I didn't. I didn't," Trump said, going on to describe Carson hitting a friend in the face with a padlock. "I never did that. I mean, I misbehaved, I talked during class ... but no padlocks in the face to friends."

Trump reserved his greatest theatrics for his opponent's description of attacking a classmate with a knife, only to have the blade break on the would-be victim's belt buckle.

"But lo and behold, it hit the belt! It hit the belt," Trump said, arms stretching outward. "And the knife broke. Give me a break. Give me a break. Give me a break. The knife broke."

Stepping away from the lectern, Trump demonstrated how his belt would move upward or downward if it were struck by a knife, inviting members of the audience to try it out.

"It moves this way, it moves that way!" Trump said. "How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?"

The billionaire business mogul did not let up on the knife story, continuing to question the anecdote's veracity.

"Give me a break, give me a break," he said again, appealing to Iowans' intelligence. "It doesn't happen that way. It doesn't happen that way."

Trump then slammed Carson for "complaining about the press not treating him well" after a string of stories questioning his biographical details.

"Let me tell you something: If I did the stuff he said he did, I wouldn't be here right now," he declared. "It would have been over. It would have been over. OK? It would have been totally over."

"So that's who is in second place, and I don't get it," Trump said. "I don't get it."