Joe Biden tweeted Donald Trump's talk about groping women against their will amounts to "sexual assault." | Getty Biden accuses Trump of 'sexual assault'

Vice President Joe Biden issued a scathing rebuke of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying his talk about groping women against their will amounts to "sexual assault."

"The words are demeaning. Such behavior is an abuse of power. It’s not lewd. It’s sexual assault. –Joe," Biden said in a tweet Saturday afternoon.


Trump's campaign is in crisis mode after the release on Friday of a tape from 2005 in which Trump makes vulgar comments about being able to grope women because he's "a star."

Biden has been vocal about the issue of sexual assault in the past. He has helped spearhead the "it's on us" campaign, which aims to raise awareness around sexual assault on college campuses and reduce the number of such crimes. In 1990, then-Sen. Biden introduced the Violence Against Women Act, which passed in 1994.

Speaking at the United State of Women Summit in Washington last June, the vice president urged men to take a more active role in preventing sexual assault.

“You guys in the audience, we’ve gotta overcome this social discomfort of calling out the misogyny that happens when no women are present: the locker room talk, the bar banter, the rape jokes,” Biden said. “As a man, maybe it makes you uncomfortable, but if you let it pass because you wanna become of the one guys, you become an accomplice.”