Joe Biden's team fired back at President Donald Trump for insulting the vice president while on foreign travel, saying Trump's endorsement of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un's put-down of Biden is “beneath the dignity of the office.”
"To be on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former Vice President speaks for itself,” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement timed within minutes of Trump’s return to the White House.
Biden and Kim engaged in a war of words over the past week, with Kim calling the former vice president and 2020 Democratic frontrunner “a fool of low IQ” in an article published by North Korea’s state-run news service.
In the midst of a state visit to Japan, Trump fired off a tweet siding with Kim’s assessment of Biden's intelligence. Trump wrote that he “smiled when [Kim] called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse,” spelling Biden’s name wrong initially before correcting himself. “Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?” he asked.
Trump’s hot-and-cold relationship with the North Korean dictator has trended warmer since the pair met for the first time last summer to discuss denuclearization in the communist country. His latest comments — which came over Memorial Day weekend — departed from precedent that presidents leave domestic political tiffs at home while traveling abroad and were condemned even by members of Trump’s own party along with Biden's fellow Democrats.
Trump's Biden barbs were coupled with a downplaying of North Korea's recent missile tests, which broke with concerns expressed by his national security adviser and Japanese leaders.
He later underscored his alignment with Kim in a joint press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. “Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low-IQ individual. He probably is, based on his record. I think I agree with him on that,” Trump declared.
Bedingfield lambasted Trump's remarks as "part of a pattern of embracing autocrats at the expense of our institutions — whether taking Putin’s word at face value in Helsinki or exchanging 'love letters' with Kim Jong Un.”
Trump has shown an outsize willingness to criticize Biden more than any other Democrat running for president. His advisers have protested his jabs at Biden, urging him to stay out of the Democratic primary and to avoid looking threatened by the former vice president.
A Biden campaign official said the delayed timing of the statement, the campaign's first official response, was intentional because Biden wanted to respect “the sacred purpose of Memorial Day, remembering those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country.”
Article originally published on POLITICO Magazine
