President Trump sided with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s description of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as “low IQ” during a news conference Monday in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Asked if he was taking the side of a dictator rather than a former US vice president, the president tore into Biden.
“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 told reporters with Abe at his side.
Trump went on to knock the Obama administration’s handling of the economy and its policies on Syria, North Korea and Iran.
”So I don’t take sides as to who I’m in favor or who I’m not, but I can tell you that Joe Biden was a disaster. His administration, with President [Barack] Obama, they were basically a disaster when it came to so many things, whether it was economy, whether it was military, defense,” he said of the Democratic front-runner who could be his opponent in the 2020 election.
“No matter what it was, they had a lot problems. So I’m not a fan,” he said.
Trump expressed particular disdain for the 2015 nuclear deal Obama brokered with Iran and a number of global leaders that eased sanctions in return for the Islamic Republic limiting nuclear development.
Trump withdrew the US from the pact in May 2018.
”If you look at the deal that Biden and President Obama signed, they [Iran] would have access — free access — to nuclear weapons, where they wouldn’t even be in violation, in just a very short period of time,” Trump said. “What kind of a deal is that? So we can’t have that.”
In a tweet over the weekend, Trump said he “smiled” when North Korea called “Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?”
In the first version of the tweet, Trump misspelled the former veep’s name as “Bidan.”
State-run North Korean media lashed out at Biden last week after he referred to Kim as a “dictator.”
“He is self-praising himself as being the most popular presidential candidate. This is enough to make a cat laugh,” the Korean Central News Agency wrote, adding that he was a “fool of low IQ.”
Biden’s communications director, Kate Bedingfield, responded to Trump’s tweet on the social messaging site.
“Yes, it is sending you a signal,” she wrote.
