Former Vice President Joe Biden joked in an interview that aired Tuesday that he would challenge President Donald Trump to a push-up contest if the President attacked his age or mental health.
“I would say, ‘Come on Donald, come on man. How many push-ups do you want to do here, pal?’ Jokingly,” Biden said in an interview with MSNBC. “You know, come on, run with me man.”
The lighthearted remark — another example of Biden’s determination to focus on Trump rather than the crowded field of Democrats vying for the party’s 2020 nomination — is not the first time the Democratic front-runner has suggested he would take on the President in a show of physical force. He previously made a similar suggestion and rejected the notion that he would be intimidated in a CNN exclusive interview with Chris Cuomo.
“The idea that I’d be intimidated by Donald Trump,” Biden said with a look that suggested that notion would be foolish. “He’s the bully that I knew my whole life. He’s the bully that I’ve always stood up to. He’s the bully that used to make fun when I was a kid that I stutter, and I’d smack him in the mouth.”
While campaigning for congressional candidates at the University of Miami last year, Biden said he would take on the President after his lewd comments about women in the past.
“If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him,” Biden said in March 2018. Trump, in turn, has boasted that he would “kick his ass” and that doing so would be “easy.”
The comments in Tuesday’s interview came in a discussion regarding potential debate strategies should Biden earn the Democratic nomination and face the President in the general election. Biden said he wouldn’t play into Trump’s confrontational nature in a debate, citing his experience as his tool in aiding his preparation.
“It’s very different than turning to someone on a stage who says something that’s so off the wall to me because I don’t want to attack anyone on stage, that’s not what I intend to do,” Biden said. “But I realize that some have concluded that because I didn’t respond very tough back to (Kamala Harris) that how can I take on Trump? I’ve never had any trouble taking anyone on from Trump to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin to (Chinese President) Xi Jinping himself.”