Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday a European prime minister once compared President Donald Trump to Italy's fascist leader Benito Mussolini, reports say.
At an event with Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, Biden said the comparison referenced Trump's elbowing the president of Montenegro at a group photo at a NATO summit in Brussels in May.
Biden said the unnamed European leader described to him how Trump "took the president of Montenegro, shoved him aside, stuck his chest out and his chin, and all I could think of [was] 'Il Duce,'" The Guardian reported.
When Biden reenacted the mock pose, eliciting laughter from the audience, he cautioned: "Not a joke, not a joke. That's what people are thinking," Guardian reported.
"This breaking down of international and national norms is the glue that holds the liberal world order together, is the glue that holds together our system," Biden went on to say, Guardian reported.
Biden said holdovers from the Obama administration also call him concerned about the state of the federal government, and he tells them: "Please stay," CNN reported.
"I don't want to see the chief of staff quit; I don't want to see the secretary of state quit; I don't want to see the secretary of defense quit," he added, the Guardian reported.
"We have a president that doesn't understand governance," he said, CNN reported.
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