Trump says he’d beat Biden in a boxing match, three years after Biden threatened to ‘beat the hell out of him’

Former US president Donald Trump says he’d like to beat up the nation’s current leader.

During a promotional event for a boxing match between two other pugilists of advancing years – Evander Holyfield, 58, and Vitor Belfort, 44 – Mr Trump, 75, fantasised aloud about who he’d like to face in the ring.

“Well if I had to pick somebody in the world, not only a professional boxer because I’ll take a pass on the professional boxers – that can be a very dangerous subject,” Mr Trump told the audience by telephone, “I think probably my easiest fight would be Joe Biden because I think he’d go down very, very quickly.”

The former president added that he thought “Biden would go down in the first few seconds.”

The comments drew a smattering of laughter and applause at the Triller Fight Club event, which was attended by the hosts, the boxers, and a few journalists.

Mr Trump was in some ways answering a threatening remark Mr Biden made about him three years ago.

“You know, he once said, ‘Oh, I’d like to take him behind the barn,’” the former president recalled. “He’d be in big trouble if he ever did.”

In 2018, Mr Biden told College Democrats at the University of Miami that with Mr Trump, he’d prefer a fight to a debate.

“When a guy who ended up becoming our national leader said, ‘I can grab a woman anywhere and she likes it,’” Mr Biden said in 2018, “they asked me, 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 was referring to the infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Mr Trump was recorded bragging that he could “grab [women] by the p****” and get away with it because he was “a star.”

When the audio recording emerged in late 2016, it nearly derailed Mr Trump’s presidential campaign, but the Republican candidate dismissed it as “locker room talk.” A month later, he won the presidency.