Former Vice President Joe Biden compiled what was said to be his response Wednesday evening in Reno, Nevada to President Donald Trump’s allegations of corruption, declaring in his prepared text: “I’m not going anywhere!”

The tagline — with its unfortunate double-meaning — was reported by the Washington Post, which obtained excerpts of the speech in advance, merely hours after several new polls suggested that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) had surged past Biden into first place in the race for the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

A Monmouth Poll of early primary states released Wednesday found Warren (28%) ahead of Biden (25%) by 3% — barely within the poll’s 3.1% margin of error. A new YouGov/Economist poll found Warren (28%) ahead of Biden (22%) by 6%.

Moreover, the breaking news that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), 78, had been admitted to hospital for emergency heart surgery also drew attention to Biden’s age (76) and his own history of health problems.

Still, Biden wanted Trump — and Democrats — to know that he would fight on, in response to Trump’s charges that he and his son, Hunter, were “stone-cold crooked.” The Washington Post reported from his remarks, as prepared for delivery:

“Let me make something clear to Trump and his hatchet men and the special interests funding his attacks against me — I’m not going anywhere,” Biden will say. “You’re not going to destroy me. And you’re not going to destroy my family. I don’t care how much money you spend or how dirty the attacks get.” … Biden said Trump sought to discredit him and his family because, “like every bully in history—he’s afraid. He’s afraid of just how badly I would beat him next November.”

The Post concluded its story by quoting Biden: “Nobody has ever asserted that I did anything wrong except he and what’s that fellow’s name? Rudy Udi? Giuliani?”

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.