President Trump on Tuesday claimed he “was actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden” this weekend when he publicly cheered North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un insulting the ex-veep. On Sunday, while visiting Japan, the president tweeted that he was unperturbed by Kim’s recent weapons testing, but “I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Bidan [sic] a low IQ individual, & worse. Perhaps that’s sending me a signal?”

Biden’s camp fired back on Tuesday, in a statement: “To be on foreign soil, on Memorial Day, and to side repeatedly with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former Vice President speaks for itself.” And several hours later, the president doubled down via a backhanded clarification: “I was actually sticking up for Sleepy Joe Biden while on foreign soil,” Trump tweeted. “Kim Jong Un called him a ‘low IQ idiot,’ and many other things, whereas I related the quote of Chairman Kim as a much softer ‘low IQ individual.’ Who could possibly be upset with that?”