President Donald Trump attacked Democratic presidential candidates Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren during a call to Boston Herald Radio. | Mark Wilson/Getty Images 2020 elections Trump: Biden's not as smart as Bernie

President Donald Trump on Wednesday waded once again into the 2020 Democratic primary, telling a Boston radio show that former Vice President Joe Biden is "not as smart as" Sen. Bernie Sanders and slamming the campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

In a phone call to Boston Herald Radio that lasted almost 20 minutes, Trump launched his now-familiar attack on “Sleepy Joe’s” intelligence and complained Warren (D-Mass.) should resign after she called for Attorney General William Barr to step down earlier Wednesday.


Asked which primary candidate posed the greatest threat to his election, Trump was apparently unconcerned. When probed about the former vice president specifically, Trump called Biden a “sleepy man” and proceeded to bash his endorsement from the International Association of Fire Fighters on Monday.

“In many ways, I like him,” Trump said of Biden. “He’s not as smart as Bernie [Sanders]. And he’s not as quick.”

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The president’s comments came despite urgings from some of his top advisers — including his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — to stay out of primary politics. Some believe Trump’s repeated jabs at Democrats, particularly Biden, are at best a waste of time. At worst, the president’s aides fear Trump's criticisms might provide fuel to the former vice president’s campaign that could propel him into the general election with strong momentum.

Still, the president continued his insults of individual challengers.

“The firefighters are going be voting for me. So are the police. So are the military,” Trump said, dismissing union leaders as “dues-sucking people.”

The president said Warren’s campaign is “not doing very well” and lambasted the senator for her tweet Wednesday calling Barr “a disgrace” and demanding the attorney general resign because he is “not a credible head of federal law enforcement."

Barr faced stiff questions on Wednesday from the Senate Judiciary Committee in the wake of reports that special counsel Robert Mueller had twice raised concerns about the attorney general’s handling of the report detailing the special counsel's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Democratic lawmakers lashed out at Barr for his decision to write a four-page memo to Congress characterizing the probe’s results instead of releasing summaries written by Mueller, and for failing to mention Mueller’s concerns in an April congressional hearing.

In the five-hour hearing Wednesday, Barr took swipes at Mueller’s legal theories and his decision to investigate Trump for obstruction of justice. The back-and-forth heightened Democrats’ cries that the attorney general was working to protect the president.

Trump, in the radio interview, said Barr “did a fantastic job” and called Warren’s calls for resignation — which he was asked about specifically — “ridiculous.”

“Look, she defrauded the public for a long time,” he said. “She should really be the one to resign. Hence, the name Pocahontas.”

“She has gone through colleges and gotten jobs and gotten in all because she supposedly had Indian blood, and then it turned out that wasn’t true,” Trump continued, taking one of his favorite hits at Warren’s past claims of Native American heritage. “So she’s defrauded the public. She’s defrauded the colleges and I guess other places of work, and she should be the last one to be talking.”

Trump also discussed a probe into the genesis of Mueller’s investigation, pledging to declassify documents — including the Steele dossier, a former British spy’s raw intelligence documents that outlined allegations of coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin — in the “not too distant future.”

In one response, the president alternated between touting the strong economy his administration has overseen and berating Mueller’s investigation as a ploy by Democrat’s to defeat him in 2020.

“That’s the only way they could maybe get lucky,” the president said of Mueller's probe.