President Donald Trump launched a personal attack on Joe Biden in a nearly 5-minute ramble at a White House press conference on Friday, saying people shouldn’t “feel so sorry” for his predecessor.
It began with a question from Fox News’ Peter Doocy.
“So many of the things that you’re trying to do are held up in court right now,” Doocy said. “If the courts are going to have so much influence over U.S. policy, do you wish you would have just become a judge?”
Both Doocy and Trump laughed after the question. The president then launched into a lengthy rambling response in which he called a federal judge in Boston “a radical left person,” criticized the previous administration’s immigration policies, praised himself and called Biden a “vicious person.”
His comments about Biden came as Trump was trying to explain why he doesn’t “believe” that Biden was truly responsible for some of his administration’s policies.
“He’s been a sort of a moderate person over his lifetime,” Trump said of Biden. “Not a smart person. But a somewhat vicious person, I will say. If you feel sorry for him, don’t feel so sorry, because he’s vicious.”
Trump added, “He hurt a lot of people. And so, I really don’t feel sorry for him.”
It was not immediately clear exactly what Trump was referring to when he said he didn’t “feel sorry” for Biden. However, many news outlets and people on social media noted that the comments came off as particularly insensitive in the wake of the former president’s cancer diagnosis.
Biden’s office announced this month that he had been diagnosed with aggressive stage 4 prostate cancer, but told reporters at his Delaware home on Friday that “the prognosis is good.”
“The expectation is we’re going to be able to beat this,” Biden said
After the news broke, Biden was met with an outpouring of support and encouragement, including from people in Trump’s cabinet. Others, including Donald Trump Jr. and far-right influencer Laura Loomer, took his illness as an opportunity to attack him.
Trump himself initially posted a sympathetic message on Truth Social, writing, “Melania and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden’s recent medical diagnosis.”
But he later played into unverified theories that Biden had hidden his cancer diagnosis.
“Actually, I’m surprised that, you know, the public wasn’t notified a long time ago because to get to stage 9, that’s a long time,” Trump told reporters last week. (Biden has stage 4 cancer with a Gleason score of 9.)
The president also stated, “somebody is not telling the facts.”