Donald Trump won't apologize to Ben Carson over religion comments

Ben Carson and Donald Trump
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump said Sunday he won't apologize to opponent Ben Carson for comments he made that seemed to call into question the retired neurosurgeon's Seventh-day Adventist faith.

ABC's This Week host, George Stephanopoulos, asked Trump, who is a Presbyterian, about a potential apology for what he said at a Florida rally Saturday: "I mean, Seventh-day Adventist, I don't know about."

Trump told Stephanopoulos that he meant he just wasn't familiar with Carson's belief system.

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"Well, I didn't say anything bad about it. I just don't know about it," 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."

Carson, who had called for an apology, hit back at Trump on Sunday in an interview on NBC's Meet the Press, disputing Trump's characterization of his persona as "low energy."

"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 quipped.

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Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.