The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah doesn’t understand why Ben Carson insists he stabbed someone

Did Ben Carson really try to stab someone? The question has somehow become a big part of the Republican presidential race in the past week. And The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah doesn’t understand how.

“This is weird for me. Maybe it’s me or where I’m from, right? But this shit is weird,” Noah said on Monday’s show. “So the media is saying, ‘Those rumors about you having a clean record and you being an upstanding member of society, those things are true.’ And Ben Carson’s like, ‘Bullshit! I’m dangerous, and I try to kill people, and I’m a bad person. I should be president!’”

But as Noah pointed out, the Carson campaign seems to increasingly struggle with telling the truth about history, personal or otherwise. Last week, Politico reported Carson wasn’t offered a “full scholarship” to West Point, as he claimed in his autobiography. Before that, BuzzFeed posted an old video clip that showed Carson claiming the pyramids were giant granaries built by biblical figure Joseph, not tombs for pharaohs, as most archaeologists believe. And there are many more bizarre examples, including claims that the Holocaust happened because the Jews weren’t sufficiently armed and suggestions that the theory of evolution was invented by the devil.

Carson has fought back against allegations that he struggles with the truth, typically by arguing that the media is just trying to tear him down. He argued that the media never scrutinized President Barack Obama’s past in the same way — even though, as Noah pointed out, there were reports that literally questioned whether Obama was even born in America.

“So they vetted Obama to the point where they questioned that he was a legitimate, natural-born American citizen,” Noah said. “But at least no one ever accused Obama of not stabbing a guy. He got off easy.”