Donald Trump has responded to the recently released video showing Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the attack on the Capitol on January 6 saying that she would “punch him out”.
“She’s a despicable person, very bad for the country,” Mr Trump said during a phone interview on the Salem News Channel.
“If I ever said that, it would be a national scandal … What about Biden saying, ‘Take him to the back of the barn’? That’s one I’d do right now,” he added.
“If I ever said oh that would be terrible, but [when] he said, they think it’s so cute, isn’t it wonderful – you blow on them and they’d fall over,” Mr Trump said.
In the footage obtained by CNN, the speaker’s Chief of Staff Terri McCullough tells Ms Pelosi that “the Secret Service said they have dissuaded him from coming to Capitol Hill. They told him that they don’t have the resources to protect him here so at the moment he’s not coming but that could change”.
“I hope he comes, I’m going to punch him out ... I’m going to punch him out, I’m going to go to jail, and I’m going to be happy,” Ms Pelosi said.
Mr Trump pushed hard to go to the Capitol during the insurrection, according to testimony given to the January 6 committee.
“They asked me [if] would I like to debate this gentleman, and I said no. I said, ‘If we were in high school, I’d take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him,’” Mr Biden said in 2018, according to CNN.
Mr Biden was speaking about the Hollywood Access video released during the 2016 campaign, in which Mr Trump appeared to brag about committing sexual assault. Mr Trump later apologised, claiming that the 2005 footage showed him partaking in “locker room talk”.
“I’ve been in a lot of locker rooms my whole life. I’m a pretty damn good athlete,” Mr Biden said in 2018. “Any guy that talked that way was usually the fattest, ugliest SOB in the room.”
“The press always ask me, ‘Don’t I wish I were debating him?’ No, I wish we were in high school – I could take him behind the gym. That’s what I wish,” Mr Biden said in Pennsylvania while campaigning for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
At the 2018 Gridiron Dinner in Washington, DC, Mr Trump struck back.
”There is talk about Joe Biden. Sleepy Joe! You know when he said, ‘I’m going to take you behind the barn’? Oh, just trust me, I would kick his ass. He’d be easy. But, Joe, gimme a break. A guy who keeps making outrageous statements thinks he has a shot of being president? A guy who makes outrageous statements? He is going to be president?!” he said at the time.
