“I’ve said for multiple months, is that if we take the fight to [ISIS] over there, we’re much less likely to have to fight them over here,” Carson said in Wilton, Iowa. He expressed annoyance over the recent criticisms directed at him.

“I find it a little frustrating when I say things like that and nobody ever pays any attention,” Carson said. “And they say, ‘Carson doesn’t know anything about foreign affairs.’ And yet, everybody picks up on all of the stuff that I say, including President Obama, and starts using it themselves. I think it’s very, very strange.”

Talking to reporters later in Davenport, Carson suggested it is “hypocrisy” to question his foreign policy acumen.

“I don’t mind people talking about all the things that I’ve been talking about,” Carson told reporters. “But you know, don’t act like I haven’t said these things and that I don’t have the knowledge, and because it comes out of somebody else’s mouth, ‘Oh, it’s a wonderful thing.’ I just, the hypocrisy just bothers me.”