A heated and rude exchange between the two oldest candidates contesting the US presidential election turned into a brawl over the art of golf on Thursday.
For the first time in an already excruciatingly long campaign, 81-year-old Joe Biden and his 78-year-old rival Donald Trump traded insults and accusations for 90 minutes on prime time television.
Name-calling ensued: “You’re the worst!” “No, you’re the worst!”
Accusations were made: “You’re the one complaining!”
And then they started fighting about their golf handicaps.
“He can’t hit a ball 50 yards,” Trump said, marking one of the few times the two men have addressed each other directly.
“He challenged me to a golf match. He can’t hit a ball 50 yards.”
Trump’s own vitality was never in question, claiming, “I’m in as good a shape today as I was years ago.”
While not shying away from his putting ability, Biden insisted he is ready to play on the green.
“I would love to take part in a driving competition,” he said. “When I was vice president, I brought my handicap down to six.”
Trump scoffed.
“Six handicap?” He frowned. “I’ve seen your swing. I know your swing.”
The exchange came at the end of a debate hosted by CNN, which began without the handshakes customary on such occasions and went downhill from then on.
The animosity between the two men was palpable, with Biden lashing out at a man he said had the “morals of a street cat.”
“How many billions of dollars in civil fines are you going to have to pay for groping a woman in a public place, having sex with a porn star and getting your wife pregnant,” he said, in reference to Trump’s alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
The Republican former president again denied adultery, but a New York jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal payments he made to the woman.
Trump missed a few opportunities to claim that Biden is “weak” and not a “leader.”
He also took aim at Biden’s alleged mental weaknesses, an issue that voters have repeatedly worried about.
He said, “I took two tests, cognitive tests. I passed both of them, as you know, we made it public.”
“He didn’t take any questions. I would have liked to see him take one question, just one, very easy question, like getting through the first five questions. He couldn’t do that.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
