Donald Trump Went Full Trump in a Tirade Against Ben Carson

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It looks like the grind of the campaign trail is starting to wear on short-fingered reality TV star Donald Trump, who, despite his best efforts, is still slipping in the polls to Ben Carson. That's perhaps why Trump unleashed a full-on tirade Thursday night at a rally held in Fort Dodge, Iowa. On stage for 95 minutes, Trump was, by all accounts, a hot mess of anger and insults directed toward Carson, who Trump compared to a child molester.

Trump's attack on his fellow GOP candidate centered around the increased scrutiny Carson has recently faced about his accounts of his past. In his memoir, Gifted Hands, the former neurosurgeon wrote about how as a child he had violent outbursts—attacking his mother with a hammer, trying to stab a friend with a knife—until he was able to quell his anger with the help of Jesus Christ. Carson's mother confirmed his account in an 1997 interview, but Trump is apparently among those who still think he's lying. The real estate mogul told his Iowa audience Carson has a "pathological temper" and "pathological disease" that couldn't be cured. "A child molester, there's no cure for that. If you're a child molester, there's no cure," he told the crowd, according to the Washington Post. "They can't stop you. Pathological? There's no cure."

Trump took particular umbrage over the story of Carson's almost-stabbing his friend, which ended with Carson's blade being stopped by his buddy's belt buckle. Trump questioned whether or not this was even possible, and even stepped around the podium to mockingly ask if anyone in the audience had a knife, and would like to give his own belt buckle a try. "How stupid are the people of Iowa?" Trump asked the crowd, clearly indignant. "How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?"

The Post reports that the Midwestern audience did not warm to an angry New Yorker berating them for being morons. "As Trump attacked Carson using deeply personal language, the audience grew quiet, a few shaking their heads," reporter Jenna Johnson wrote. "A man sitting in the back of the auditorium loudly gasped."

Carson's response to the insults, through his business manager: "Pray for him."