President Trump Donald John TrumpBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Romney: 'Unthinkable and unacceptable' to not commit to peaceful transition of power Two Louisville police officers shot amid Breonna Taylor grand jury protests MORE’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani said on Friday that he thinks former Vice President Joe Biden Joe BidenBiden on Trump's refusal to commit to peaceful transfer of power: 'What country are we in?' Democratic groups using Bloomberg money to launch M in Spanish language ads in Florida Harris faces pivotal moment with Supreme Court battle MORE is "dumb" when asked about comments he made earlier in the day calling Biden a “mentally deficient idiot.”

Asked by CNN’s Chris Cuomo if he thought Biden was stupid, Giuliani said no — but with a caveat.

“In that category, I think he is,” Giuliani said, discussing Biden's school record. “I think that explains the plagiarism. I think the plagiarism is very serious. I don’t think he’ll ever get beyond that.”

Giuliani was referring to Biden's decades-old admission that he accidentally plagiarized while in his first year at Syracuse University Law School. Biden said he didn't understand at the time how to properly cite his sources, according to The New York Times.

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Giuliani also said that he didn’t mean to call the former vice president a “mentally deficient idiot," as he did in an interview with HuffPost, but then went on to attack Biden’s intelligence.

“I didn’t mean that, I meant that he’s dumb,” Giuliani told Cuomo when asked about his comments. He went on to repeat a claim that Biden was last in his law school class, which Cuomo disputed. The Associated Press reported in 1987 that Biden graduated 76th in a law school class of 85.



Giuliani said Biden had a “plagiarism problem” in law school and as a senator and said it “indicated something about character.”

“I was asked if he’d be a formidable candidate. I said no, he’d be someone that I think the president would like to run against. He never did well as a national candidate,” Giuliani said of Biden.

“I would prefer to see him as the candidate ... I would think it’d have to be somebody, a surprise, not a retread from [former President] Obama, [Hillary] Clinton,” Giuliani added, referring to Trump's likely competition in 2020.