WASHINGTON _ Joe Biden started it. President Donald Trump counter-punched. Even pro wrestling has more realistic plot lines than this.
Biden, the 75-year-old former vice president, retold a fantasy he's had about exchanging fisticuffs with Trump over comments that the president made about women that emerged during the 2016 election campaign on the now-infamous "Access Hollywood" video.
"They asked me if I'd like to debate this gentleman, and I said 'no,'" Biden said Wednesday during a sexual assault prevention event at the University of Miami. "I said, 'If we were in high school, I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.'"
Trump has dismissed his remarks on the video, which were suggestive of sexual assault, as locker-room talk. Biden, who is considering a presidential run based in part on his appeal to older, working-class men who are considered Trump's voter base, told his audience that guys who talked about women in a locker room the way that Trump did are "usually the fattest, ugliest S.O.B. in the room."
Trump doesn't let comments like that just sit there. So the 71-year-old president punched back on Twitter first thing Thursday morning:
"Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy. Actually, he is weak, both mentally and physically, and yet he threatens me, for the second time, with physical assault. He doesn't know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don't threaten people Joe!"
