‘He would go down’: president hits back at fighting talk

AMERICA got a foretaste of how the 2020 presidential election race could shape up as Donald Trump and Joe Biden, both septuagenarians, threatened to physically attack each other.

Mr Trump, 71, said that Mr Biden, 75, would “go down hard” in a fight, and promised to “kick his a--”. He was responding to playground-style taunts from Mr Biden, the former vice-president, who had threatened to take the current US president “behind the gym and beat the hell out of him”.

Writing on Twitter, Mr Trump said: “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!”

Mr Biden had made similar comments in the closing days of the 2016 presidential campaign.

He has made little secret of his regret at not running against Hillary Clinton for the Democrat nomination then, or his desire to take on Mr Trump. Speaking at the University of Miami at a rally aimed at changing the culture surrounding sexual assault on campuses, Mr Biden brought up lewd comments Mr Trump made about groping women in 2005. He said: “A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it’.”