Jamie Dimon just threw down the gauntlet, issuing a series of bellicose comments — at least politically speaking — directed squarely at President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

The JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) CEO said he could best Trump in a race for the White House because he’s got the physical and mental chops.

On top of that, Dimon suggested that he wasn’t born with a proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, implying that Trump didn’t earn his wealth the hard way but instead inherited it.

“And by the way this wealthy New Yorker actually earned his money,” Dimon said. “It wasn’t a gift from daddy,” he said. Dimon’s net worth is approximately $1.4 billion, according to Forbes, compared with $3.1 billion for Trump. Forbes indicates that Trump “got his start working for his father, Fred, who developed low-cost housing in Brooklyn and Queens.”

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The comments come at a JPMorgan-sponsored event where the outspoken Dimon was answering questions from a moderator about whether he would might be interested in throwing his name in the mix in a 2020 fight for the presidency. They drew a sharp retort from Trump Thursday morning on Twitter .

“The problem with banker Jamie Dimon running for President is that he doesn’t have the aptitude or “smarts” & is a poor public speaker & nervous mess - otherwise he is wonderful,” Trump said. “I’ve made a lot of bankers, and others, look much smarter than they are with my great economic policy!”

In the past, Dimon has described himself as a patriot who wants to serve his country the best way he feels that he can, but thus far he has been reluctant about entering the political arena in earnest. “I would love to be president of the United States of America” he said, according to a Vanity Fair article. Dimon has been described in the past as America’s least-hated banker and perhaps among the most prominent among his ilk in the national scene.

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It’s impossible to say how Dimon might fare against Trump in a presidential tête-à-tête, but the CEO’s company has been the best performers among the nation’s largest banks.


Soon after his remarks on Wednesday, Dimon moderated them, emphasizing that he isn’t running for president. “I should not have said it,” he wrote. The JPMorgan chieftain said his statements are proof that he wouldn’t make a good politician. “I get frustrated because I want all sides to come together to help solve big problems,” he said via emailed remarks from a JPMorgan representative.

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Shares of JPMorgan are up 6.3% so far in 2018, exceeding the performance of peers, including Citigroup Inc. (C), Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC) Morgan Stanley (MS) , Goldman Sachs (GS) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC), which are mostly negative for the year (with the exception of B. of A.’s 3.7% year-to-date return). By comparison, the Dow Jones Industrial Average , of which JPMorgan is a component, is up 5.4% in 2018, while the S&P 500 index has advanced by 8.1% and the Nasdaq Composite Index has climbed nearly 15% so far this year, according to FactSet data.

This article originally appeared on MarketWatch.