Joe Biden said on Tuesday that he will challenge Donald Trump to push-ups on the stage if Trump mocks him during the debates, Yahoo News reports.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski during a Morning Joe interview that aired on Tuesday, Biden said that, if Donald Trump were to question his physical or mental state, Biden would challenge Trump to push-ups. “I’d say, ‘C’mon Donald, c’mon man. How many push-ups do you want to do here, pal?’” Biden then clarified that he was joking.
Brzezinski and Biden were discussing an incident that happened during last month’s NBC News debates, during which Biden was hit with an allegation that he himself admits he wasn’t prepared for. During that round of debates, California Senator Kamala Harris brought up Biden’s history of opposing federally-mandated busing, as well as Biden’s claims that he had been willing, during his Senate career, to work with segregationist Senators even though he strongly disagreed with their views. Biden admitted to Brzezinski that he wasn’t prepared for Harris’ statements, but he promised that when it comes to debating Trump, he’ll be ready.
This isn’t the first time Biden has suggested that a debate with Donald Trump may involve displays of physical prowess. As reported at the time by The Inquisitr , earlier this month Biden told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that a debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden could result in fisticuffs.
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At one point during the 2016 debates, as Hillary Clinton spoke on the debate stage, Trump appeared to crowd behind her. Biden seemed to suggest that it was a sign of physical aggression from Trump, which he said that he would not brook if it happened to him. Making flicking motions with his hands, seemed to invite Trump to try that with him.
“I’m looking forward to this man. You walk behind me in the debate. Come here, man,” Biden said.
That reference to fist-fighting and physical aggression was not the first time Biden had referenced such a thing in regards to Trump. In March 2018, as Huffington Post reported at the time, Biden said that, in his high school days, had he been around a classmate who treated women the way Trump allegedly did, he would “take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him.” Trump, for his part, responded in a tweet that, should the two men ever have the chance to engage in schoolyard fisticuffs, Biden would “go down fast and hard, crying all the way.”