Trump: Biden would be my 'dream' opponent in 2020
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Despite numerous controversies swirling around his administration, two ongoing investigations of his campaign’s contacts with Russia and his possible obstruction of the federal probe, President Trump says he’s already dreaming about a potential Democratic opponent in the 2020 presidential election: former Vice President Joe Biden.
“I dream about Biden,” Trump told CBS News in an interview that aired Thursday morning. “That’s a dream. Look, Joe Biden ran three times. He never got more than 1 percent and President Obama took him out of the garbage heap, and everybody was shocked that he did. I’d love to have it be Biden.”
Biden, who decided not to run for the Democratic nomination in 2016, is reportedly mulling a Democratic presidential bid along with several others, including Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“I think I’d like to have any one of those people that we’re talking about,” Trump continued. “You know, there’s probably the group of seven or eight right now. I’d really like to – I’d like to run against any one of them, but Biden never by himself could never do anything.”
In 1988, then-Sen. Biden ran for the Democratic nomination and withdrew amid charges he plagiarized some of his speeches and exaggerated his law school record. He ran again in 2008, losing to Obama, who subsequently chose Biden as his running mate.
Biden has expressed regret for not running for the 2016 Democratic nomination, in part, because he believes he would’ve beaten Trump. After the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape that captured Trump bragging about assaulting women in October 2016, Biden expressed a desire to take on — in a fistfight.
“The press always ask me, ’Don’t I wish I were debating him?’” Biden said. “No, I wish we were in high school — I could take him behind the gym,” Biden said. “That’s what I wish.”
Trump responded by saying he would “love that.”
“Did you see where Biden wants to take me to the the back of the barn? Me. I’d love that,” Trump, by then the Republican nominee, said at a rally. “Mr. Tough Guy. You know, he’s Mr. Tough Guy. You know when he’s Mr. Tough Guy? When he’s standing behind a microphone by himself?… Some things in life you could really love doing.”
And earlier this year, at an anti-sexual assault event at the University of Miami, Biden again said that if he were in high school and heard Trump making lewd comments about women, he would “take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.”
Trump again responded in kind.
“Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy,” the president tweeted. “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!”
Biden later said he regretted the remarks.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” Biden said in an interview with Pod Save America a few days later. “I shouldn’t have brought it up again, because I don’t want to get down in the mosh pit with this guy.”
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