Trump responds to Joe Biden’s taunts with derision of his own

WASHINGTON — Imagine a pay-per-view steel-cage fight featuring Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.

The Republican president and the former Democratic vice president are trading fighting words over who’d come out on top in a hypothetical physical matchup.

Trump, reacting to taunts Biden made earlier in the week, tweeted Thursday: “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!”

At a University of Miami rally Tuesday against sexual assault, Biden cited lewd comments that candidate Trump made in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” tape about grabbing women without their permission.

“If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him,” Biden said. He also said any man who disrespected women was “usually the fattest, ugliest SOB in the room.”

Biden, 75, made similar comments in the closing days of the 2016 campaign.

He has kept open the possibility of a 2020 bid for president and is gearing up to play a big role campaigning for Democrats running in this year’s midterm elections.

Biden refrained from reupping his taunts in an appearance Thursday in Washington, just blocks from the White House.

He stuck to the promised subject of protecting U.S. workers in the age of globalization during a speech at the Newseum.