(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump said on Monday he agreed with North Korea’s insult of former Vice President Joe Biden’s intelligence, calling the Democratic presidential candidate “a disaster” during a trip to Japan.

“Kim Jong Un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low-IQ individual. He probably is based on his record. I think I agree with him on that," Trump said at a joint press conference in Tokyo with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. A U.S. reporter had asked the president whether it had been his intention in a Sunday tweet to appear to side with Kim, a dictator with a poor human rights track record, over a fellow American.

North Korea’s official state news agency KCNA said last week that Biden, who leads nearly two-dozen major candidates running for his party’s nomination, was a “fool of low IQ” and a “snob bereft of elementary quality as human being.”

Trump, who has appeared most worried about potentially facing Biden in the November 2020 presidential election, said in a tweet Sunday said he “smiled when [Kim] called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?”

The U.S. leader went even further in Tokyo on Monday. “I can tell you that Joe Biden was a disaster, his administration with President Obama, they were basically a disaster when it came to so many things,” Trump said. “Whether it was economy, whether it was military, defense, no matter what it was. They had a lot of problems. So I’m not a fan.”

Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Trump’s remarks, which came in the middle of the night in the U.S.

In a statement last week, Biden spokesman Andrew Bates said that “given Vice President Biden’s record of standing up for American values and interests, it’s no surprise that North Korea would prefer that Donald Trump remain in the White House.”

Trump has been criticized by members of his own party for his previous remarks on Biden. Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger called the comments “just plain wrong” in a Tweet on Sunday. 

--With assistance from Shannon Pettypiece.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Washington at jepstein32@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Daniel Ten Kate, Derek Wallbank

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