Joe Biden is taking a page out of the Donald Trump playbook after assigning the president a new nickname. According to Bloomberg News, the Democratic presidential candidate said that while he didn’t intend to assign nicknames in the campaign, he joked that he could start with calling Trump a “clown.”
Biden was speaking with donors on Saturday at a fundraiser in South Carolina. One donor asked the former vice president to address Trump’s habit of giving his opponents nicknames.
“There are so many nicknames that I’m inclined to give this guy. We could just start with clown,” he said. “When he says these ridiculous things he says, I mean this, I put my hand up and say, ‘everybody knows who you are’ because they do know.”
“The only place he has any confidence is in the mud. The only thing he doesn’t know how to respond to is issues and specifics,” he added.
Trump has assigned Biden the nickname of “Sleepy Joe.” He frequently gives his opponents nicknames, like when he assigned former Senator Hillary Clinton the nickname of “Crooked” Hillary, and Jeb Bush, who he called “Low Energy Jeb.” He has also called Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” and California Representative Maxine Waters “Crazy” Maxine.
Despite claiming that he planned to take the high road, Biden also referred to Trump as a “no good S.O.B.” during his speech, and said that he hoped Trump wouldn’t attack his children and grandchildren, though he expected it to happen.
Biden came right of the gate with something that perfectly captures with the majority of Americans think of Trump
Joe Biden Calls Trump A Clown While Campaigning In South Carolina https://t.co/tnoDOpuDUg via @politicususa #TrumpyTheClown
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) May 5, 2019
Biden also revealed that 14 separate heads of state from around the world have approached him with concerns about Trump, including current British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Biden warned an assembled crowd at an earlier South Carolina rally that “Jim Crow is sneaking back” in the south, citing numerous state laws targeted at reducing voting numbers among people of color, according to CBS .
But the thing that really got the crowd excited is when Biden spoke about repealing the tax cuts implemented by the Trump administration. One attendee told reporters that she paid an extra $500 this year in taxes despite Trump’s claim that the middle class would see a reduction.
Biden has been famously critical of Trump, at one point claiming that he would have “beat the hell” out of Trump for his behavior.
“Well guess what, I probably shouldn’t have done that,” Biden said Saturday of his comments, “I don’t want to get it down to that level. The presidency is an office that requires some dignity.”
