Attacks Carson

Trump attacks Carson: 'Ben wants to knock out Medicare'

By Nick Gass

Donald Trump dinged fellow presidential candidate Ben Carson on Tuesday for his Medicaid and Medicare proposals, minutes after a national Republican poll came out showing the retired neurosurgeon leading him for the first time.

In the CBS/New York Times poll, Trump trails Carson 26 percent to 22 percent, well within the margin of error and well above the next closest competitor, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who earned just 8 percent. In this two-person race, Trump was asked why Republican voters should pick him over Carson, who had prevailed in four straight Iowa polls before Tuesday morning's results.

"Because I will make the best trade deals, I will be strongest and best on the military, I will get rid of Obamacare. You know, Ben wants to knock out Medicare, I heard that over the weekend," Trump remarked on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," an apparent reference to a recent POLITICO article on Carson's health policies. "I think abolishing Medicare, I don't think you're going to get away with that one."

"And it's actually a program that's worked. So it's a program that some people love, actually," Trump said.

In an interview with "Fox News Sunday" earlier this week, Carson defended his proposal to unwind the two popular programs and replace them with savings accounts. The suggestion that he is going to get rid of Medicare is "completely false," Carson told Chris Wallace.

"And that’s a narrative that somebody’s putting out there to scare people. What the program that I have outlined using health savings accounts starting from the time you are born until the time you die, largely eliminates the need for people to be dependent on government programs like that — but I would never get rid of the programs. I would provide people with an alternative," Carson explained. "I think they will see that the alternative that we’re going to outline is so much better than anything else that they will flock to it."

Pressed on Carson's rise in Iowa, Trump said he "did not get it."

"You look at different things having to do with Ben and there's a lot of contradictions and a lot of questions. We'll have to see," he remarked, adding, "One thing I know about a front-runner, you get analyzed 15 different ways from China, and a lot of things will come out."