Trump: Carson would have done ‘SNL’ if asked

Donald Trump isn’t buying Ben Carson’s claim that he would not have hosted “Saturday Night Live” if the comedy show had asked him.

“Well, he would’ve done it,” Trump said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Barack Obama did it, many people did it, many, many people running for office did it, or at a minimum they participated, last week Hillary did.”

{mosads}“He would have done it – if they asked him, you have to be asked, you know, it’s not easy to be asked,” he added.

Carson said hosting the comedy show was not appropriate for someone running for higher office.

“I think the presidency of the United States is a very serious thing,” the retired neurosurgeon said last month.

Trump, who hosted “SNL” on Saturday, refused to say whether he thought Carson had embellished parts of his biography.

He said dubious details surrounding Carson’s claim that he attempted to stab someone called the event into question.

“You know, you talk about stabbing someone and it got stopped by a belt buckle, which, you know, belt buckles really pretty much don’t stop stabbings,” Trump said. “They turn and twist and things slide off of them, so it’s pretty lucky if that happened.”

“I assume the book was written prior to him running for office,” he added.

Trump also discussed accounts of events in Carson’s life during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” calling it a “strange situation.”

“It’s a strange situation though when you talk about hitting your mother in the head with a hammer and hitting your friend in the face with a lock, with a padlock, and when you talk about stabbing somebody, but the knife saved him, when you know the — belt buckle saved him,” Trump said. “I mean, it’s a weird deal going on and I hope it all works out, because I don’t want to see Ben have problems over this stuff. And, you know, it’s a very strange situation.”

“I don’t know what he’s doing. I mean, I don’t know — I can say that I never tried to hit my mother in any way, shape, or form.”

–This report was updated at 10:22 a.m.