by Frank Holmes, reporter
Joe Biden’s presidential campaigns have been marked by scandals and missteps, from outright plagiarism to humiliating verbal misfires.
His third run has been no different. Here are just a handful of his worst 2019 media moments:
- Hands-on
Joe Biden’s tendency to put his hands—and arms, and lips—on any woman, anywhere, earned him the nickname “Creepy Uncle Joe.” He kissed Senator Chris Coons’ teenage daughter as she pulled away from him.
The second he put his arms around then-Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter’s wife, Stephanie, and smelled her hair became so awkward that it’s been Photoshopped onto almost everyone.
He also nearly felt up reporter Amie Parnes during the 2013 Christmas party.
After promising it was all over, this May he told a 10-year-old girl she was “good looking” before nuzzling her ear.
- Biden says all black kids are poor and bad at school?
Biden thought he’d inspire a campaign meeting of minority voters in Des Moines with his love for poverty-stricken children.
Instead, he turned it into a racial slur.
“We have this notion that if you’re poor, you cannot do it,” Biden said. “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids!”
Oops.
- Biden thinks he was Donald Trump’s vice president
In August, Biden said that the victims of Florida’s Parkland High School shooting “came up to see me when I was vice president.”
He even said some of the media in the room covered it!
But Parkland happened in 2018, more than a year after he and Barack Obama left office.
- Biden forgets what century Obama was president
In Iowa, Biden bragged that Obama protected illegal aliens… 40 years before he was president.
“We’re going to allow families to stay together while they go through the process … We did that in 1976,” Biden said.
Obama was just 13 years old when the Bee Gees were Stayin’ Alive.
- I love this state—whatever state it is
Presidential candidates are in a different place every day; it’s part of the job.
But Biden has had a worse time than most remembering just where he is.
He confused New Hampshire with Vermont and Iowa with Ohio, and—well, it happens a lot.
It seems like Joe mostly lives in the state of confusion.
- FDR: TV star
Biden doesn’t just forget when his old boss was president—he screws up major details of every president.
During a nationally televised interview with “CBS Evening News,” Biden said, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed.”
No, he didn’t—because Herbert Hoover was president when the stock market crashed.
And FDR spoke on the radio, not TV.
- “Clipping coupons” where??
Joe is relaxed; the fact that he’s on stage with a dozen presidential hopefuls doesn’t pressure him to get things right.
During a presidential debate, Biden said he wanted to raise taxes on people “clipping coupons in the stock market.”
We have no idea what he meant, either.
- Can you count to three?
In 2008, Biden said the Republican “economic plan does nothing to tackle the number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: Jobs. J-O-B-S.”
- The lame shall walk….
During a 2008 campaign rally, Biden told wheelchair-bound Missouri state senator Chuck Graham to “stand up, Chuck, let them see you!”
Biden corrected himself: “Oh, God love ya, what am I talking about?! I tell you what, you’re making everybody else stand up though, Pal.”
Good catch, Joe.
- The dead shall rise….
Biden has joked about how Irishmen like himself like to drink a bit.
He may have had a few too many on St. Patrick’s Day 2010, when he said that then-Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen’s “mom lived in Long Island for 10 years or so, God rest her soul. Err, although she’s, wait—your mom’s still alive!” he said.
Cowen’s father had died. “God bless her soul. I gotta get this straight,” Biden said.
BONUS: Website texting
Joe isn’t down with the latest tech, but bless his heart, he tries. After stumbling through his debate performance, Biden capped it off by bungling the number for voters to text him for more information.
He told viewers to go to his website, “Joe 30330,” which was actually his text number.
When it comes to mistakes and screw-ups, Joe Biden has been the gift that keeps on giving.
The conservative website Twitchy listed seven mistakes during the first Democratic debate, including claiming that Donald Trump might serve as president for eight more years.
By the fourth presidential debate, Joe had shaved his unforced errors down to seven, according to Breitbart News.
Some of his friends in the media make excuses for him. The Hill tried to blame it all on his childhood stutter—but that doesn’t explain why he can’t get basic facts right.
Even Joe Biden admitted in December, “I am a gaffe machine.”
For once, Joe got it right.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”