WASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson said Sunday that he’s facing an unprecedented level of scrutiny about the veracity of his life story and questioned whether the issues dogging him over his autobiography are important to the nation’s search for the next president.

“Every single day, every other day or every week, you know, they’re going to come out with, ‘Well, you said this when you were 13,’ ” the retired neurosurgeon said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson believes questions that dog his campaign aim “to distract the populace, to distract me.” He insists he gets more scrutiny than other candidates. The Associated Press

“The whole point is to distract the populace, to distract me,” Carson added. “If you’ve got a real scandal, if you’ve got something that’s really important, let’s talk about that.”

Moving on, at least in the short term, is unlikely. The accuracy of Carson’s autobiography has dominated his campaign in the past few days, and there are likely to be more questions asked on Tuesday during the next Republican presidential debate. The scrutiny reflects Carson’s transformation from political outsider to the top of the polls in the unsettled nomination fight, second only to billionaire developer Donald Trump. And in early voting Iowa, some polls show Carson leading.

Trump on Sunday tried to keep the allegations alive.

On several news shows, he mentioned examples from Carson’s autobiography, “Gifted Hands,” about Carson’s bad temper when he was young. Carson claimed that he tried to hit his mother with a hammer and unsuccessfully tried to stab someone. Several times, Trump quoted Carson as describing his younger self as having a “pathological” temper – and then demurred on his own opinion of Carson’s character and veracity.

“I just don’t know. I mean, I’m not involved. I don’t really know,” Trump said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Carson insists no other candidate has received the level of scrutiny that he has.

Scrutiny of his past is par for any major candidate for president, not only Carson. Carson is a newcomer to presidential politics, so much about his life, career and published works are being raked over for the first time, and his longtime status as an American success story examined. Carson strongly disputed that there was any dishonesty intended.

“Gifted Hands” is central to much of the scrutiny. It tells the story of Carson’s rise from a childhood in inner city Detroit to the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

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