Today, exciting news coming to us from the prison of masculinity—the sitting president and the former vice-president have gotten into a chest-puffing war of words over which elder statesmen would thrump the other in a schoolyard brawl. Lin-Manuel Miranda, please fire up your FinalDraft because Hamilton is about to get a sequel.
D dot Trump and J dot Biden fired warning shots at each other not at dawn on a field in Jersey but in the court of public opinion, a civilized and erudite arena if ever there was one.
Former Vice President Joe Biden was the first to draw, telling the crowd at an anti-sexual assault rally at the University of Miami that, were he in high school with Donald Trump, he would have "taken him behind the gym and beaten the hell out of him."
So, if anyone has access to the time-traveling DeLorean from Back to the Future, Joe Biden would like to make a ZipCar reservation. This all checks out, I guess, because in this scenario, as in every scenario, Donald Trump is Biff Tannen.
Biden's remarks were a warning shot fired at the S.S. Toxic Masculinity from ::squints through the haze:: another S.S. Toxic Masculinity. Oh, say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave, amiright? Not quite sure what threatening to beat Trump up for things he was later going to do accomplishes in the arena of making the world safer for women, but what do I know? I didn't even go to gym class.
President Biff Tannen got the message, however, and responded in his usual cool-headed, articulate manner on a website called Twitter dot com this morning.
Please prepare a new wing in the Presidential Library and rush another printing of Profiles in Courage to the presses.
The president called the vice president crazy, and mentally and physically weak, so it's clear that his sensitivity briefings are going swimmingly and he's got his finger on the pulse of how people with any moral character whatsoever speak in the 21st century. So, that's sorted.
There is the tiny matter of his closing salvo, a hanging chad of an admonition. The president, who will be played in this performance by a bully from an old episode of Boy Meets World, wrote "He doesn’t know me, but he would go down fast and hard, crying all the way. Don’t threaten people Joe!"
Okay. ::Takes off glasses. Pinches bridge of nose. Bites down on cyanide capsule:: First of all, um, not to go all Cambridge Analytica on you, but Biden and Trump appear to have met. So... I'd say he does know him.
They don't appear to have ever touched, however. Maybe Trump means "know" in the Biblical sense. And even though that's not what "know in the Biblical sense" means, Trump has never been in the same room as a Bible so we're safe there.
It's also possible that Trump is saying "he doesn't know me" as in "he doesn't knowwww me," like he is a cast member on a Real Housewives. Which, oh no, honey. No no no.
No.
The only version of "you don't know me" I will accept from Trump is Julianne Moore having a breakdown in Magnolia.
And even that is pushing it.
In any case, the president thinks that he and one of his immediate predecessors in the White House are not acquainted. Cool. Fine. Send me to Mars. Despite this fact, however, the president is convinced that were they to get to fisticuffs, Joe Biden would go down "fast, hard, and crying all the way."
Crying though?! Like, not to engage with this in any way that connotes even the least amount of respect for it, but is Trump serious with this? He's going to make Joe Biden cry with punches? Like, he wrote that with his hands and put it on the internet on Twitter dot com. We are in month 14 of the Embarrassment Olympics and Trump just performed a quad on the ice. The Russian judges are on their feet and screaming. Everyone is throwing stuffed Big Macs on to the ice.
No one even says this in real life. The drunkest d-bag you met on St. Patty's Day isn't out here telling other dudes he's going to beat him about the head and face so vigorously that tears will spontaneously spring forth from his eyes. This is the worst. The President of the United States is the Cash Me Outside girl and I'm all the way broken. I mean, I would watch this fight if it was broadcast live from the Rose Garden and it wasn't on pay-per-view because I am nothing if not part of the problem.
But also, can someone please put these two dueling Clint Eastwood characters in rice? Honestly, never speak to me about this again. I've run out of embarrassment. If you need me, I'll be behind the gym, side-eyeing everyone and selling tickets.
Follow R. Eric Thomas on Twitter.
