Vice President Joe Biden toasts Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2015. (Photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP via Getty Images)
(CNSNews.com) – President Trump came out guns blazing against Joe Biden during his first post-coronavirus diagnosis campaign trip to Florida on Monday, comparing his Democratic challenger’s mental acuity unfavorably with those of autocratic leaders presidents have to contend with.
After ribbing Biden for apparently forgetting Sen. Mitt Romney’s name, for misstating in a tweet which state he was in, and for mistakenly saying – not for the first time – that he was running “for the Senate,” Trump said the leaders of China, Russia and North Korea have “100 percent sharp minds” while Biden’s was not even 60 percent.
“Biden had a bad day,” he told a rally in Sanford, Florida. “He forgot Mitt Romney’s name. He didn’t know what state he was in, and he said, today he’s a proud Democrat running for the U.S. Senate.”
“Could you imagine if I did that?” Trump asked, then riffed, “‘Great to be with you. It’s great to be a wonderful developer from New York.’ They’d say, ‘He’s out of here. Get him out.’”
“No, Biden had a bad day; he’s got a lot of bad days coming,” Trump said. “Look, look, we can’t play games. The one thing I know for sure: President Xi of China – did us no favor – President Putin of Russia, you’re looking around, Kim Jong Un – whatever happened to the war we were supposed to be in with Kim Jong Un?”
“They’re 100 percent sharp,” he said of the three autocrats. “We have somebody running who’s not 100 percent, he’s not 80 percent, he’s not 60 percent. We can’t have this. As a country we can’t have it.”
Biden’s apparent difficulty in forgetting Romney’s name occurred en route to a campaign event in Ohio, when he told reporters in response to a question he did not believe Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s faith should be taken into account during her Senate confirmation hearing.
“You may remember, I got in trouble when we were running against the senator who was a Mormon, the governor, okay? And I took him on, and anybody – no one’s faith should be questioned.”
Romney, the Republican former governor of Massachusetts, ran for the White House with running mate Rep. Paul Ryan against the Obama-Biden ticket in 2012.
Biden, his campaign, and supporters portray the 77-year-old candidate as a foreign policy heavyweight. During his 36-year Senate career, Biden served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2001-3 and again in 2007-8, and as vice president under President Obama he oversaw foreign policy in several parts of the world, including Iraq and Ukraine.
He has frequently referred to having spent considerable time with foreign leaders.
“I’ve spent more time in private meetings with Xi Jinping than any world leader,” Biden told a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018, an assertion he has made at other times, including during a Democratic primary debate in South Carolina last February, when he also said that, of the seven candidates on stage, “no one up here has ever dealt internationally with any of these world leaders. I’m the only one that has.”
