President Donald Trump started off Thursday morning with a bang, setting the media on fire with a tweet aimed at former Vice President Joe Biden:
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2018
Trump’s tweet was not unprovoked, however — it was a direct response to a comment Biden made during a speech at the University of Miami as part of the “It’s On Us” anti-sexual assault campaign. Biden suggested that, rather than debate Trump in high school, he would “take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”
It wasn’t the first time Biden had made that particular threat. During a 2016 Pennsylvania rally for then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Biden said he wished that they were in high school so that he could “take [Trump] behind the gym.”
But Biden took it just a little further this time, noting that he was prepared if such a confrontation should occur: “I’ve been in a lot of locker rooms my whole life. I’m a pretty damn good athlete,” he said. “Any guy that talked that way was usually the fattest, ugliest SOB in the room.”
On Thursday morning, ABC’s “The View” tackled the battle of the septuagenarians — and host Sunny Hostin’s hot take was particularly one-sided.
She began by praising Biden’s threats as “kind of chivalrous,” and immediately pivoted to Trump’s response. “He’s such a bully, such a bully,” she repeated, wondering aloud why it was that no one had yet “taken him out back and beat the crap out of him.”
WATCH:
Hostin’s question appeared to be serious enough that she later clarified on air that she was not actually advocating violence against the president — though Meghan McCain said it really did sound like “a threat against the president.”