Donald Trump accused former Vice President Joe Biden of lying about former President Barack Obama’s lack of endorsement and said the real reason was a “big secret,” implying — based on no evidence — that Biden’s mental health was behind Obama’s silence.

“It’s part of the effort by the president to raise doubts about the health and mental capacity of Joe Biden,” Jordan Fabian, White House correspondent for The Hill, told CNN’s Erin Burnett. Trump had answered a wide range of questions earlier on Monday in an exclusive interview with The Hill and at one point, Trump fixated on Obama choosing not to endorse his former running mate in the 2020 Democratic primary.

“[Trump] has taken repeated shots at Biden sometimes against the advice of his aides to try to knock him down a peg from being the Democratic front runner,” Fabian added. “He seems to be wanting to do that more and more as the first debates are approaching.”

Fabian was referencing several insults Trump has thrown at Biden in the past few weeks. He attacked Biden as the “weakest mentally” of the 2020 Democratic field earlier in June, claiming “he’s even slower than he used to be.”

“There has to be some reason why he’s not endorsing him. He was the vice president. They seemed to have gotten along. President Obama not endorsing him is rather…a big secret,” Trump said in the interview with The Hill on Monday “Then goes and lies and says ‘I asked the [former] president [Obama] not to endorse me.’ Give me a break.”

The president went on to, again, strongly suggest that Biden’s mental capacity was the reason Obama has chosen not to weigh in in favor of Biden. “I think he’s off, he’s different,” Trump said of Biden, notably offering no specific anecdotes or evidence to back up his highly-charged claim. “We’ve all known him a long time…I’ve seen him for a long time. Frankly he looks different, he sounds different, and he thinks different.”

Of course, Trump himself is no stranger to people questioning his mental ability. Several pundits and politicians from both sides of the aisle have questioned his faculties throughout his presidency and pondered whether or not to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from power.

Watch the video above, via CNN.

from Mediaite http://bit.ly/2IEQ3We