Biden mocks Trump for his feud with a beauty queen

Asking the crowd gathered before him to consider the “character” of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Vice President Joe Biden mocked the Manhattan billionaire for his week-long feud with a former Miss Universe winner.

“You’ve got to really think about the character of someone. What type of leader awakens at three o’clock in the morning,” Biden said at a Hillary Clinton rally in Orlando, pausing as the crowd interrupted him with laughter. “No, no, no, no, no, I’m being deadly earnest. You don’t have to be a psychologist or psychiatrist, but what kind of a leader awakens at three o’clock in the morning and tweets Hillary helped, quote, disgusting Alicia M, become a U.S. citizen so she could use her in a debate. Or 3:30 in the morning? This guy wants to be president of the United States of America.”


The wee-hours Twitter rant to which Biden referred occurred early last Friday morning, punctuating a week that Trump’s team spent defending itself in the face of the GOP nominee’s long history of derogatory remarks towards women. At last week’s presidential debate, Clinton recalled Alicia Machado, who was crowned Miss Universe in 1996 and who Trump called “Miss Piggy,” because of her supposed weight gain, and “Miss Housekeeping,” referencing her Hispanic heritage.

In his Friday flurry of Twitter posts, Trump went on to charge that Clinton had been “duped and used” by Machado. He urged his followers to “check out [Machado’s] sex tape and past,” references to a 1998 murder investigation in which she was never charged and rumors that she has appeared in pornographic films, of which there is no evidence.

After Clinton brought her up at the debate, Machado quickly vaulted into the political spotlight, doing interviews with NBC’s “Today” show and Cosmopolitan Magazine. She told the latter that Trump’s name-calling had triggered a return of her bulimia that took her years to recover from and that she had become a U.S. citizen this summer specifically so that she could vote against the real estate mogul.

In response, Trump told Fox News that Machado was “the worst we ever had” at the Miss Universe pageant because “she gained a massive amount of weight, and it was a real problem.” He added that of all the slights Clinton had launched his way at Monday night’s debate, recalling Machado was the only one that got under his skin.

Aside from the issue of Trump’s treatment of Machado, Biden also attacked the Manhattan billionaire’s lack of awareness on issues of foreign policy. He slammed Trump’s “unabashed admiration” for Russian President Vladimir Putin and seeming ignorance in a past interview that Russia had invaded Ukraine.

“To his credit he recently acknowledged he realized Crimea is part of Ukraine, which is like he’s going to acknowledge there’s gravity later, too,” Biden joked.

The vice president seemed unable to help himself from taking another shot at Trump when a baby began crying at the start of his remarks.

“Unlike Trump I really don’t mind, the baby crying, I mean,” Biden said, recalling a Trump campaign event over the summer when Trump ejected a baby who was making noise during his speech.