Former Vice President Joe Biden regrets saying that if he were in high school, he would fight President Donald Trump over the way Trump has talked about women.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said,” Biden told the hosts of the “Pod Save America” podcast in an interview.
“I don’t want to get down in the mosh pit with this guy,” Biden said, referring to the President.
Earlier this month, Biden said that he would “beat the hell out of” Trump if the two were in high school, citing comments Trump made in an “Access Hollywood” video unearthed by The Washington Post in October 2016. In the video, Trump talks about grabbing women’s genitals and says that “you can do anything” when you’re “a star.”
In the wake of Biden’s “beat the hell out of him” comments, Trump punched back on Twitter, calling Biden “weak, both mentally and physically,” and saying that “he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way.”
Biden emphasized in the “Pod Save America” interview that he was referring to how he would have acted if he were in high school, not how he would act toward the President today.
“Now, the idea that I would actually physically get in a contest with a President of the United States or anybody else now is not what I said,” Biden told the podcast. “It is not what this was about, but I should have just left it alone.”
The former vice president added: “What I did say back when he was running, when he made these comments about being able to grab women in their private places and so on and so forth – I was asked during the campaign whether or not, do I regret not being able to debate Trump. And I said, you know if we were in high school – and I did this again, I said if we were in high school – and he said that in the presence of my sister, I would take him behind the gym,” Biden said.