Fresh off his “Saturday Night Live” hosting gig, Donald Trump joined NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning to react to news that Ben Carson may have embellished parts of his life story, including his violent youth and other anecdotes from his writing.
“I feel badly for Ben, I’ve gotten to like Ben, it’s a tough thing,” Trump said, adding that Carson is “going to have to explain a lot of things away: the scholarship situation, the dinner with (General William) Westmoreland when Westmoreland wasn’t there.”
Trump also rejected Carson’s theory the Egyptian pyramids were built to hold grain.
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And on whether he thinks Carson’s rising poll numbers are a threat to his campaign, Trump responded, “I think everyone’s a threat to me, I look at all of these people, I like a lot of them, I respect a lot of them — I think everybody’s a threat.”
Of the crowds gathered outside 30 Rockefeller Center to protest his appearance on “SNL,” Trump claimed there were more protesters in favor of him outside the building than against him.
When asked if he was comfortable with the show mocking the Latino groups who protested him, Trump replied, “Not only comfortable, it was something I had to agree to, and I loved it.”
Trump added: “I’m doing great with Hispanics … I employ thousands of Hispanics, I’m going to bring jobs back for Hispanics, and we’re going to win the Hispanics.”
Trump spoke on a number of networks on Sunday about the controversy, repeating that he hopes this works out fine for Carson.
“I hope frankly it comes out great for him,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” he said, “I’m not looking to see anything bad happen to him,” and on NBC’s “Meet the Press” he told Chuck Todd “I feel badly for Ben, I’ve gotten to like Ben.” At the same time, the real estate mogul commented that it was a “very strange situation” on ABC’s “This Week” and said he doesn’t “know what to think” on CBS. Trump used the controversy as a way to separate himself from Carson, saying he would not have done some of the things Carson has admitted to. “I can say that I never tried to hit my mother any way, shape, or form,” Trump said Sunday on “This Week.”
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