Donald Trump on Wednesday mocked Ben Carson’s reported lack of foreign policy knowledge as “pretty sad,” opening a new front of attack on his chief rival.
Carson has tried to distance himself from a policy adviser who told the New York Times on Tuesday that he had serious gaps in his foreign policy knowledge. Trump, who has looked to expose Carson’s political vulnerabilities at every turn, told reporters in Massachusetts that he believed the stories.
“That’s a pretty serious problem. I don’t want someone incapable of learning foreign policy when we have ISIS, when we have Iran, when we have all of these problems,” Trump said, a charge he repeated when speaking to the crowd shortly thereafter. “When the New York Times says, from his top adviser and a couple of others, he’s essentially incapable of learning foreign policy, I mean that’s pretty sad.”
Trump and Carson are neck-and-neck in national and Iowa polls. But some wonder whether the Republican race’s new focus on foreign policy after the attacks in Paris will disadvantage Trump and Carson, two outsiders without much experience dealing with national security challenges.
Trump dismissed other GOP rivals as well, saying Marco Rubio was not the next Ronald Reagan and that Jeb Bush was faring so poorly in polls that his campaign is “over.”