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"Biden will be a formidable and strong candidate for the nomination at the least," Reed, a top voice for the religious right, told a pair of reporters on the program.

He pointed to the former vice president's "distinguished career" in the Senate and in the Obama administration, while noting Biden's previous White House bids.

"He's been around a long time. He's been in public life for almost half a century. As a presidential candidate, he's not had a lot of luck," Reed said, pointing to the plagiarism scandal that derailed his 1988 campaign and his inability to gain traction in the 2008 race. "Today it's a very different situation."

"At least nominally, in terms of polling, he's the front-runner. The challenge will be two-fold. No. 1, the party he's running in now is totally different than the party he ran in in 2007 and 2008," Reed said, pointing to the party's rush to the left in recent years and the changes in fundraising from the big-donor approach to courting small donors online. "It'll be very interesting to see how he's able to adapt to that."

Reed's remarks came just hours after Trump took a shot at the former vice president's intelligence on Twitter.

Trump over the past month has knocked Biden whenever given the chance, including tweeting a video mocking Biden over allegations of improperly touching women at public events.