Carson dismisses Trump’s ‘super low energy’ jab

Ben Carson is dismissing a jab from fellow GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump that the retired neurosurgeon is “sleeping” and “super low energy.”

{mosads}Carson said during an interview set to air Sunday morning on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that he has “plenty of energy.”

“I don’t get into the mud pit,” Carson, who has been surging in the polls in Iowa, told host Chuck Todd. “And I’m not going to be talking about people. 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 people often mistake his soft-spokenness with a lack of energy.

“I have plenty of energy. But, you know, I am soft-spoken,” he said. “I do have a tendency to be relaxed. I wasn’t always like that. There was a time when I was, you know, very volatile. But, you know, I changed.”

Carson said that, as a teenager, he “would go after people with rocks and bricks and baseball bats and hammers.”

“And, of course, many people know the story when I was 14 and I tried to stab someone. And, you know, fortunately, you know, my life has been changed. And I’m a very different person now.”

Carson has previously discussed anger issues he experienced as a teenager and an event in which he almost stabbed a classmate in Detroit.