US President Joe Biden on Tuesday cracked a joke about his documents that almost certainly seemed like a reference to Donald Trump, who on Tuesday was indicted on 37 federal charges in his classified documents scandal.
Biden spoke about his long relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, which goes back more than a decade to when they were both vice presidents.
“I’ve allegedly met more face-to-face with Xi Jinping than any world leader has,” Biden told a roomful of diplomats at an event honouring the State Department’s Chiefs of Mission.
“I had a lot of personal, just one-on-one conversations. And we each had a simultaneous interpreter,” Biden said, then cracked: “I turned all my notes in.”
The audience laughed.
“And that’s not a reference to the president, the former president,” he said, drawing some more laughs. “But look, no, it really isn’t.”
Biden has not commented on Trump’s indictment.
Despite Biden’s insistence, it did seem to be a reference to not only Trump’s penchant for keeping sensitive documents, but to a specific incident.
The Washington Post reported in 2019 that the then-president had taken the notes from his translator after a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ordered her not to speak to other officials about that conversation.
The newspaper said there was no record of at least five of Trump’s face-to-face meetings with Putin.