Donald Trump maintains attacks on front-running Carson
Donald Trump, now trailing Ben Carson in a pair of Iowa polls, maintained his political attacks on the retired neurosurgeon during Sunday show interviews.
"Ben Carson is super low energy, right?" Trump said on CNN's State of the Union, echoing attacks he once made on Jeb Bush. "Super low energy. We need tremendous energy."
Trump also refused to back down questioning Carson's religion -- Seventh Day Adventist -- telling ABC's This Week that "I didn’t say anything bad about it. I just don’t know about it."
Carson, appearing on NBC's Meet The Press, said he wouldn't "get into the mud pit" with Trump or any of his other opponents.
"I will tell you, in terms of energy, I'm not sure that there's anybody else running who's spent 18 or 20 hours intently operating on somebody," Carson said.
Carson is seeking an apology from Trump over a weekend commend that appeared to question is religion: “I’m Presbyterian. That’s down the middle of road. I mean, Seventh-day Adventist I don’t know about.”
Asked on ABC why he even raised the issue of Carson's religion, Trump said: "I would certainly give an apology if I said something bad about it. But I didn’t. All I said was I don’t know about it."
Trump's attacks come in the wake of polls showing that he is trailing Carson in Iowa, which opens the 2016 election season with caucuses on Feb. 1.
While criticized for some of his comments -- including suggestions that some government policies could lead to Nazi-ism -- Carson told NBC that his message of less government is resonating in Iowa and elsewhere.
"The fortunate thing is a lot of people really do think for themselves, as you can see, you know, from the poll numbers here," Carson said.
The leader in polls elsewhere, Trump told ABC that Carson is his top challenger only in Iowa.
"Not everywhere else," he said, "because everywhere else I see they’re all different people all over the lot, all scattered all over the place."
New polls from CBS News show Trump tied with Carson in Iowa, but still way ahead in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina.
"I don't understand Iowa because, frankly, I just left and we had tremendous crowds and tremendous enthusiasm," Trump said during another interview on CBS' Face The Nation. "And frankly, even to be tied, I'm a little surprised. I know that I'm very honored by what's happened in New Hampshire and South Carolina, it's amazing results, amazing."