March 22, 2018

Trump Attacks “Crazy Joe Biden,” Says He Could Beat Up Former Vice President

“He would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.”

Andreas Gebert/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump attacked former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday for saying that he would “beat the hell out of” the president if the two had been in high school together. The two grown men are no longer in high school, and Biden’s remarks were made in reference to Trump’s long record of disrespecting women.

“Crazy Joe Biden is trying to act like a tough guy,” Trump tweeted Thursday morning. “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!”

Trump was reacting to Biden’s comments to a group of students at the University of Miami this past Tuesday, in which Biden condemned the president for his infamous “pussy” comments.

“A guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it,'” Biden said, according to an ABC report. “They asked me if I’d like to debate this gentleman, and I said ‘no.’ I said, ‘If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.'”

“I’ve been in a lot of locker rooms my whole life,” Biden added. “I’m a pretty damn good athlete. Any guy that talked that way was usually the fattest, ugliest S.O.B. in the room.”

Trump’s less-than-presidential response on Thursday comes as first lady Melania Trump attempts to combat cyberbullying. Those supposed efforts have been derided as Trump continues to use social media to regularly attack and threaten his perceived enemies. The first lady addressed her skeptics this week, saying that they “will not stop me from doing what I know is right.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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