Biden camp fires back at Trump's 'low IQ' remarks: 'Beneath the dignity of the office'
WASHINGTON – Former Vice President Joe Biden waited until President Donald Trump was back on the East Coast before letting loose at a weekend's worth of insults.
Minutes after Air Force One touched down, returning Trump to Washington after a formal state visit to Japan, the Democratic 2020 candidate responded to the president's decision to embrace an insult hurled at Biden by North Korean state media.
"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's deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement.
Bedingfield called Trump's remarks "beneath the dignity of the office."
Trump did not respond to questions as he returned to the White House Tuesday but appeared to joke about the brouhaha in a tweet later that evening. The president said he was "actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden" because he used a "much softer" term than North Korean state media.
"Kim Jong Un called him a 'low IQ idiot,' and many other things, whereas I related the quote of Chairman Kim as a much softer 'low IQ individual,'" Trump wrote on Twitter.
"Who could possibly be upset with that?"
A top aide in the president's campaign also shot back at the Biden campaign.
"That’s rich coming from Joe Biden, who bashed President Trump while standing on foreign soil earlier this year in Germany," Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for Trump's campaign posted in a tweet.
Murtaugh appeared to be referring to a speech Biden made in February in which he criticized the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy at the U.S.-Mexico border that led to an increase in family separations. Biden called that policy an "embarrassment."
"The America I see values basic human decency, not snatching children from their parents or turning our back on refugees at our border," Biden said. "Americans know that's not right."
Biden did not mention Trump by name during the address, nor did he attack Trump personally.
Trump upended a decades-long convention of U.S. officials leaving internal politics at the "water's edge" during the visit to Japan over the weekend, repeatedly slamming Biden throughout the trip. The president latched onto an insult hurled at Biden by North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and told an international audience he agreed with the dictator.
"Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low-IQ individual. He probably is, based on his record,” Trump said during a news conference in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The back-and-forth between Trump and Biden began more than a week ago, when the former vice president criticized Trump's foreign policy during a rally in Philadelphia. Biden, who leads the Democratic presidential field in polling, accused Trump of edging closer to “tyrants” such as Kim. Days later, North Korean state media described Biden as a “fool of low IQ” and an “imbecile bereft of elementary quality as a human being.”
Biden's campaign remained mostly silent over the weekend, but sent out the statement shortly after Trump arrived back in Washington.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Biden camp fires back at Trump's 'low IQ' remarks: 'Beneath the dignity of the office'
