Washington, Mar 18 (EFE).- The president of the United States on Monday mocked a potential leading contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, saying his verbal slip in a speech was a sign of low intelligence.
Donald Trump made his remarks on Twitter after former Vice President Joe Biden appeared to indicate he was running for the nation’s highest office but then corrected himself and said he had not yet thrown his hat in the ring.
“Joe Biden got tongue tied over the weekend when he was unable to properly deliver a very simple line about his decision to run for President. Get used to it, another low I.Q. individual!” Trump tweeted.
The US president has previously slammed numerous high-profile individuals as lacking in intelligence.
He made his remarks about Biden after the erstwhile senator gave a speech at a Democratic Party event in Delaware on Saturday.
“I’m told I get criticized by the ‘New Left,'” Biden said, referring to a group of freshmen lawmakers who describe themselves as democratic socialists. “I have the most progressive record of anybody running for the … anybody who would run.”
“I didn’t mean … Of anybody who would run! Because folks, we have to bring this country back together again,” Biden added over the loud applause of his supporters.
Biden, who was former head of state Barack Obama’s vice president from January 2009 to January 2017, is the leader in early Democratic 2020 polling, although the ex-senator has not yet officially announced his candidacy.
Several US media outlets, however, speculated that Biden’s remarks were intentional and that he wanted to gauge the response to his announcement from the media and potential voters.
If he declares, Biden would join other Democratic presidential hopefuls including Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar and Kirsten Gillibrand and a former member of the US House of Representatives, Beto O’Rourke.
Gillibrand was the latest to announce her candidacy, saying she was entering the race in a video released Sunday.
Trump has mocked the intelligence of prominent people on several occasions.
After Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) urged her supporters to confront and harass Trump administration officials in public, the president called her an “extraordinarily low IQ person” in a June 2018 tweet.
Trump also used a similar insult last August against basketball superstar LeBron James and CNN news anchor Don Lemon, both of whom are frequent critics of the president.
James has called Trump a “bum” and said in his interview with Lemon that the president is trying to divide the country.
In his response, Trump said Lemon is the “dumbest man on television” and that in the interview “he made Lebron (sic) look smart, which isn’t easy to do.”
In December, the president also mocked the intelligence of his former secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, whom he fired a year ago.
After the former ExxonMobil CEO said in an interview that he had had to stop Trump from taking actions that would have been illegal, the president retaliated on Twitter.
“Rex Tillerson … didn’t have the mental capacity needed (to be secretary of state). He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell,” the president tweeted.