Joe Biden Told Trump To Grow Up — Again

Joe Biden, never known as a shrinking violet, has perhaps gotten even more candid since leaving office — especially when it comes to the White House's new occupant. At his most recent speaking event, Biden said Trump should stop tweeting and be an adult. And no, it wasn't Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Fallon who pulled these wise words out of the former vice president. He was at the University of Pennsylvania, at a launch event for the brand new Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement. It was a serious event — and Biden's strong words came with some serious advice.

"The words of a president matter. They have enormous, enormous, enormous, reverberating sounds around the world," Biden said. He's definitely one to know, having served right alongside one of the most eloquent presidents in recent history, in my opinion. "Every time a U.S. president speaks and says something, leaders and people around the world try to dissect what he means because it matters so much to their security, threats they face, whatever it is," Biden went on. "So, you can't loosely make assertions without limiting your ability to lead."

Trump, of course, is the king of loosely making assertions. He's sent out more controversial tweets in the last week than Obama has in his entire life. And now, as the president, he has the biggest platform in the world for his conspiracy theories and baseless accusations. It's unsurprising, then, that Biden would say this when asked what his one piece of advice for Trump would be: "I would stop tweeting and start focusing."

Biden didn't stop there, however. He also took swipes at Trump's lack of preparedness for the office in other ways, qualifying that sentiment by saying "In fairness to President Trump, I never thought he was going to be President Trump." In Biden's mind, Trump was "at an enormous disadvantage when he won," just in terms of how much his transition team had done to get ready for a potential win. This is still apparent now, as Trump still has hundreds of positions left unfilled across numerous government offices.

The former VP reckons that this is going to cause problems for the administration, no matter how confident Trump seems out of the gate. "One of the reasons I predict there will be no tax bill is there's not enough people in the Treasury to handle the calculations and strategy," said Biden.

Given Trump's attacks on Biden's former partner in governance and Biden's history of calling Trump a child, he probably won't rush to heed the former vice president's words — but there's a good chance that his presidency would be improved if he did.