“Would Anyone Vote for That Face?” Ben Carson has moved up to second place and won the honor of standing next to poll leader Donald Trump.

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump exploded in a three-minute-plus diatribe directed at GOP rival Ben Carson Thursday after the famed neurosurgeon questioned the real estate developer’s faith.

The spark was an interview on Wednesday with Rolling Stone, in which Trump said Fiorina’s face would make her unelectable. “Look at that face!” he cries. “This is what I will say, because I hope you don’t have ten more cards in there about vice president“, Haley said during a Q&A at the National Press Club in Washington.

“No, I’m talking about persona”, Trump reiterated on Fox News’s “Greta”, repeating a claim he stressed in several other interviews early in the day. “Are we serious?” Mr Trump was quoted as saying. Mean-spirited GOP voters after all, seem more interested in egging Trump on, than in penalizing him for his crude sexist remarks.

It’s official. There will be 11 candidates on the main stage for the primetime GOP presidential debate next week, CNN announced Thursday evening, and once again, Trump will be at center stage.

The original criteria to determine the ten candidates invited to participate would have taken into account polls conducted prior to the first debate, in which Mrs Fiorina barely registered. “I don’t”, Trump said.

“I think those comments speak for themselves”, Fiorina said on The Kelly File last night. At the moment, he has a wider lead among men than women. They’re all barely registering in polls, and Perry looks particularly wounded after he stopped paying his campaign staff. A consecutive appearance at the secondary debate further underscores the idea that these candidates are, and will remain, long-shots. CNN says candidates were chosen based on 14 polls.

Fiorina, the only woman in the crowded Republican field, has been rising in the polls since being widely viewed as the victor of the “undercard” debate of lower-polling candidates last month in Cleveland. Carson maintains a high favorability as well, and his support rises to 30 percent if Trump were to leave the race.

“Since he has changed his mind on amnesty, on health care and on abortion”, she continued, “I would just ask, what are the principles by which he will govern?”