Joe Biden, the human gaffe machine, is the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee for the 2020 election, and this has been incredibly entertaining for anyone interested in politics, as well as incredibly sad for many fans of the Democratic Party. Joe Biden simply does not create enthusiasm, and this could be a huge hindrance for him. Speaking from personal experience, I do not know, nor have I met, anyone who is thrilled for a Joe Biden presidential run, and this is incredible, seeing as I live in deep blue Massachusetts and go to school in equally blue New York. In fact, I have seen approximately two “Biden for President” signs and one man wearing a “Biden 2020” t-shirt. The fact of the matter is that Biden cannot energize anyone, and his rallies are legendarily small. One thing he has done, however, is manage to embarrass himself and have more than half the population believe he has dementia thanks to his frequent inability to string a simple sentence together, claiming he will “beat Joe Biden” and that he is “running for the United States Senate.” Biden has had so many memorable moments throughout the campaign trail, and none for the reasons he would hope. So, in order to bring a bit of cheer into these turbulent times, I will be discussing ten of Joe Biden’s most memorable gaffes on the campaign trail.
Joe Biden is 77 years old, older than President Trump, who is already the oldest president in American history, and his age has been showing, not only through his potential mental decline, as stated previously, but also in his understanding of technology. During the third Democratic debate in September of 2019, Biden was discussing how children who attend poor schools have fewer opportunities than children who attend better funded schools, which is all well and good. However, when discussing how parents could help their children learn new words, he said that, once the children return home from school, they should, “Play the radio. Make sure the television, excuse me, make sure you have the record player on at night. The– the phone, make sure the kids hear words.” Apparently, the former vice president believes that the average American family is still listening to record players and even excused himself from saying television in order to correct himself and say record player. It seems as though, in Biden’s mind, the TV is some antiquated device, and record players are what’s in vogue now.
Not only is former Vice President Biden showing signs of his age by discussing record players, he is also doing so by showing how forgetful he is, which only fuels the theories that he has dementia. While on a campaign stop in Keene, New Hampshire, in August, 2019, Biden told local reporters, “I’ve been here a number of times… I love this place. What’s not to like about Vermont… what a neat town.” Joe Biden does not seem to know where he is, and as someone who knows some people from both the Granite State and the Green Mountain State, I know that they would be furious to be equated to those hippie-dippie pot farmers or the Gadsden Flag waving billboard-lovers on either side of the Connecticut River respectively. And while people do often mistake some states for others, a career politician should know about the well-known swing state of New Hampshire, but, then again, he did place fifth in their primary.
Sometimes Biden both messes up his words and makes factually incorrect statements. The perfect example of this was during the fifth Democratic debate in November of 2019, when he touted his support among African-Americans, citing his support from not only three former chairs of the Congressional Black Caucus, but also, “the only bla-African-American woman that had ever been elected to the United States Senate.” However, there have been two female African-Americans elected to the United States Senate, and the other was standing right next to him, that being his opponent Kamala Harris. Needless to say, she did not support him. Besides being factually inaccurate when the proof was quite literally right in front of him, Biden also inadvertently made up a new name for Americans of African descent, “Blafrican-Americans.” The support of “Blafrican-Americans” will surely win him the votes of the “O’Biden-Bama Democrats.”
Joe Biden makes himself out to be a friendly sort of fellow, contrary to the President, but this simply is not true, as seen in an infamous video from a stop in Iowa during his dated and geriatric-sounding “No Malarkey” tour. During a question-and-answer panel, an older, overweight gentleman questioned Biden’s Ukraine dealings, which involved then Vice President Biden threatening to withhold aid to the Ukrainian government unless they fired the prosecutor who was investigating the company that Biden’s son Hunter was deeply involved in. This led the former vice president to say to him, “If you wanna check my shape on [dealing with the Ukrainian government], let’s do push-ups together man, let’s run, let’s do whatever you wanna do. Let’s take an IQ test… look fat, look, here’s the deal, here’s the deal.” Not only does Joe Biden get incredibly aggressive with a random Iowan man, he challenges him to a push-up competition as if he’s a spring chicken himself and doesn’t belong in a geriatric ward somewhere. Then, he insinuates that the man is unintelligent by telling him to take an IQ test. He straight up calls him fat. Not only this, but, just before that, he got angry with the man and called him a “damn liar” for daring to question Biden’s innocence in the Ukraine scandal. All around, this shows just how unhinged the man is, and how little patience he has with people who do not agree with him 100% of the time.
All across the nation, American schoolchildren are taught the Declaration of Independence, and it is not uncommon for many to know the iconic preamble of it by heart, but not Joe Biden. During a rally in Texas in March of 2020, Biden attempted to invoke this symbol of American freedom and fell flat on his face when he spewed out the horrific butchering of Jefferson’s words, saying, “We hold these truths to be self evident. All men and women are created by the, oh, you know, you know the thing.” This was, truthfully, incredibly sad and concerning, considering the former vice president cannot even say the second sentence of one of the most famous documents in American history. Even small children could do better than the man who is running for president of the United States on a major party ticket.
In perhaps Biden’s most confusing gaffe, he insulted a college student during a rally in New Hampshire (or was it Vermont?) during February of 2020. The young woman asked Biden why, following his fourth place showing in the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire Democrats should vote for him, which is certainly a reasonable question. In response, Biden said, “I was a Democratic caucus [sic]. You ever been to a caucus? No you haven’t. You’re a lying, dog-faced pony soldier.” Putting the fact that Joe Biden did not participate in a Democratic caucus but rather himself was the Democratic caucus aside, he insulted a young woman asking a legitimate question by calling her a liar and saying she looked like a dog. He also called her a pony soldier, but the consensus is still out there as to what exactly that means. Overall, his need to attack a potential supporter for no real reason and call her outlandish names is just another example of Biden’s bizarre mental state.
Biden also appears to have a poor grasp on numbers, as seen during the tenth Democratic debate in South Carolina in February, 2020. While attempting to attack opponent Bernie Sanders, Biden claimed that, “150 million people have been killed since 2007 when Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability, more than all the wars, including Vietnam, from that point on.” It is a safe bet to say that just about everyone who is reading this has been alive since 2007, and, since anyone can clearly see that half the entire U.S. population has not, in fact, been shot to death since 2007, this is patently false in every sense. Unless there are mass graves hidden all over the place and, by sheer coincidence, no one in my immediate vicinity was part of that genocide, then this will get the coveted Politifact “pants-on-fire” rating.
In one of his most ignorant and offensive quotes to date, Biden managed to offend just about everyone while speaking to the Asian and Latino Coalition PAC in Des Moines, Iowa, in August of 2019 when he said, “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” There is no defending this gaffe, despite him quickly saying, “Rich kids. Asian kids” after the fact. Any way the Biden team slices it, the optics are terrible. Either Biden lives in Bernie Sanders fantasy land where white people cannot possibly be poor, disregarding the nearly 16 million white Americans in poverty, or he is saying that all minorities are poor and/or unintelligent, which is equally false and borderline racist. Frankly, it is baffling that anyone could support Joe Biden after such a statement, and the ALC PAC certainly didn’t as they threw their support behind Kamala Harris instead.
Following on with the theme of Joe Biden saying something offensive, during an interview with “The Breakfast Club” podcast host Charlamagne tha God, Joe Biden made the wild claim that, “If you have a problem figuring out whether if you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.” Apparently, Joe Biden has the power to control the melanin levels in people’s skin and determine what race they are. Let’s not beat around the bush here: this is incredibly racist. It implies that all African-Americans are a hive mind and think the exact same way as if they were some sort of eusocial insects and not the free-thinking individuals that they are. Let’s not kid ourselves either, if President Trump said something so brazenly racist as this, he would be mercilessly attacked, and rightfully so, so why is Joe Biden allowed to get away with it? Even his apology was half-hearted, with him saying, “I shouldn’t have been such a wise guy. I shouldn’t have been so cavalier in responding to what I thought was, eh, anyway, it–it was, I don’t take it for granted at all.” Biden just gave up halfway through his apology and showed the world just how little he regards African-Americans.
Finally, we’ve arrived at the greatest Joe Biden moment of all time, and although this is technically cheating since it happened back in 2017, it resurfaced and became popular during the campaign, so it is being counted anyay. If anything, it shows that Biden’s mental state has been in decline for a while now. While attending an event for the renaming of a swimming pool in Wilmington, Delaware, Vice President Biden recounted a tale of his time as a lifeguard in 1962, where he insulted a man known as “Corn Pop” by calling him Esther Williams and telling him he couldn’t go in the pool with hair pomade on without a swimming cap. Corn Pop proceeded to tell young Joe to meet him in the parking lot where the quick-thinking Biden brought a metal chain he wrapped around his arm to defend himself from Corn Pop and his razor blade. Biden then apologized to him and became friends with the supposed gang-leader. Whether or not this is at all true remains to be determined, but, at the end of the speech, Biden has this incoherent mess to say, and the words speak for themselves. “I sit on the stand, and it get hot [sic]. I gotta lotta, I got hairy legs, that turn, that–that–that–that turn, uh, um, uh, blond in the sun. And the kids used to come up and reach into the pool, and rub my leg down so it’s straight, and then watch the hair, come–come back up again. They’d look at it. So I learned about roaches, I learned about kids jumping on my lap, and I love kids jumping on my lap.” The more Joe Biden speaks, the more believable the theories that he has early onset Alzheimer’s become.
So, those are just ten of the most, dare I say, insane things Joe Biden has said on the campaign trail (mostly). All of these, along with the many, many other flaws the man has, makes him simply unfit to be the president. While reading about these gaffes is certainly humorous, the idea of this man being the leader of the free world is no joke.
