WATCH: Joe Biden Tells Stephen Colbert Whether He Wanted to Take a Rusty Chain to Critics of the ‘Dr.’ in Dr. Jill Biden

Late Show host Stephen Colbert put President-elect Joe Biden on the spot by asking him if he felt any violent impulses toward the gaggle of critics who assailed incoming First Lady Dr. Jill Biden for being called “Dr. Biden.”

On Thursday night’s episode, Colbert asked Dr. Biden about the attacks on her title, begun with a Wall Street Journal op-ed and continued by conservative media figures like Tucker Carlson.

“You once said in your own memoir that the role I have felt most at home in is Dr. Biden,” Colbert said, then asked “Now some people have recently taken it upon themselves to question that title of yours. Do you have any reaction to those people?:

“Yeah, that was such a surprise,” Dr. Biden replied, to agreement from the host, and added “And you know, it was really the tone of it that I think that, you know, he called me ‘kiddo’ and…”

“One of the things I’m most proud of is my doctorate,” Dr. Biden continued. “I mean, I worked so hard for it. And you know Joe came when I defended my thesis, and…”

“I got to hand her the doctorate on the stage at the University of Delaware,” President-elect Biden interjected, beaming with pride, and added “She had two masters degrees, she kept going to school all the time while teaching at night, and then what happens is, I said ‘Jill why don’t you get a doctorate and make us some real money.’ She gets the doctorate and gets a $2,000 raise.”

Dr. Biden expressed gratitude for her defenders, saying “I was just overwhelmed by how gracious people were toward me.”

Colbert then asked Mr. Biden “What about you, as a husband who loves this person, did you ever you know want to get out a length of pool chain and go full Corn Pop on these people?”, a reference to a famous anecdote from the campaign trail.

“The answer is…” Biden began, but Dr. Biden stepped in and said “No, the answer is no.”

“No no but, there’s some of these…” Biden began, then demurred with an “Anyway.”

“It was just the tone of it,” Dr. Biden said, as her husband smiled and added “I’ve been suppressing my Irishness for a long time.”

“It’s always a smart thing to do,” Colbert agreed, in a tough but fair critique of our people.

Watch the clip above via CBS.