White House Struggles to Defend Trump's Kim-Inspired Biden Slam

(Bloomberg) -- The White House is grappling with the political fallout from Donald Trump’s remarks in Japan over the weekend, where he repeatedly borrowed an insult from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to criticize Joe Biden.

Senior Adviser Kellyanne Conway on Wednesday forcefully rejected the idea that the president had agreed with a dictator’s criticism of the former vice president and front-runner to challenge Trump’s re-election.

“The president did not side with a dictator,” Conway told reporters at the White House, explaining that Trump and Kim “came to the same conclusion separately” that Biden isn’t smart. “What’s relevant is what voters think,” she said.

During trip to Japan over the weekend to visit the country’s new emperor and its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Trump appeared to repeatedly side with Kim against both Biden and Abe. In a tweet on Sunday, he proclaimed himself undisturbed by recent North Korean weapons tests that Abe said violated UN resolutions. In a news conference with Abe on Monday, Trump noted that Kim had called Biden “a low-IQ individual” and said “he probably is, based on his record. I think I agree with him on that.”

The remarks drew broad criticism from Democrats, but also from Republicans including New York Representative Peter King, Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger and South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that an earlier Trump tweet in which he mentioned Kim’s criticism of Biden did not represent the president “siding” with the North Korean leader.

Trump’s comments referenced a May 21 statement from Korean Central News Agency, Pyongyang’s state-run media, blasting Biden as an “imbecile” and “fool of low IQ.”

Longstanding U.S. convention is that domestic politics stop at the water’s edge when the president travels abroad, a tradition that Trump has regularly ignored. Biden, though, waited until Air Force One returned to the U.S. before issuing a blistering response.

Trump’s remarks were “beneath the dignity of the office,” Biden’s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said in a statement. “To be on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former vice president speaks for itself.”

Biden leads all Democratic presidential candidates in polls nationally and in Iowa, New Hampshire and other key early states, according to RealClearPolitics. He also holds the strongest lead of potential Democratic rivals over Trump in hypothetical general election match-ups. Trump tweets about the former vice president far more than any other Democratic candidate, suggesting some concern about the potential race.

Trump is “‘not singularly focused on any one individual,” Conway said Wednesday, adding, “we don’t care who they nominate.”

Trump himself insisted this week that everyone had it wrong. “I was actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden while on foreign soil,” Trump said in a tweet following the vice president’s statement. “Kim Jong Un called him a ‘low IQ idiot,’ and many other things, whereas I related the quote of Chairman Kim as a much softer ‘low IQ individual.’ Who could possibly be upset with that?”

To contact the reporter on this story: Margaret Talev in Washington at mtalev@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu

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