Tag Archives: 2020 presidential election

The 8 Best Joe ‘The Gaffe Machine’ Biden Moments… And It’s Only Been 4 Months.

In early August, presidential candidate Joe Biden insisted: “The president’s words have meaning, no matter who he or she is. They are the face of America.”

By that standard, the self-proclaimed “gaffe machine” shouldn’t even be running.

He stumbled through his first campaign speech and it has been downhill ever since.

He may have a “functioning” brain according to his neurosurgeon, but a lot of his behavior suggests otherwise.

1. PARKLAND

Speaking at a gun control forum in Iowa, Biden said he met with the Parkland shooting survivors while serving as Vice President:

“I watched what happened when the kids from Parkland marched up and I met with them, and then they went off up to the Hill when I was vice president”.

Just one problem. The shooting occurred in February 2018 – more than a year after Biden’s departure from office.

He repeated the lie when talking to the press: “…those kids in Parkland came up to see me when I was vice president”. Biden even managed to provide a description of Senators’ demeanors when interacting with the survivors as “basically cowering, not wanting to see them. They did not want to face it on camera.”

2. KENNEDY AND KING

While speaking in Iowa, Biden falsely stated the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. occurred “in the late ’70s”.

This error – obvious to most 13-year-olds – occurred while Biden was discussing his involvement in politics at a young age:

“Just like in my generation, when I got out of school, when Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in the 70s, the late ’70s when I got engaged.”

But Biden was nearly a decade off: Kennedy was shot in June of 1968 and King in April of 1968.

Obviously.

3. MAY AND MAGGIE

Frankly, the differences between these two British prime ministers couldn’t be more stark.

But while discussing responses to President Trump’s comments about Charlottesville – which Biden and other Democratic leaders willfully misrepresent as a defense of white supremacy – he confused former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher with then Prime Minister Theresa May.

“You had people like Margaret Thatc… excuse me,” Biden said, presumably unable to recall Theresa May’s name.

Moving on, he continues: “You had people like the former chairman and the leader of the party in Germany. You had Angela Merkel stand up and say how terrible it was. International leaders looked at us like, ‘what in God’s name is happening to the United States of America?'”

Slip of the tongue? Nope. He made a similar mistake at a fundraiser in May: “Margaret Thatcher, um, excuse me, Margaret Thatcher — Freudian slip”.

4. “JOE30330!”

During the second Democratic Party presidential debate, the would-be president botched his closing statement by telling voters “If you agree with me, go to JOE 30330 and help me in this fight.”

He meant to tell voters to text “JOE” to the five-digit number, but instead left his supporters confused about how to support the campaign. 

The campaign’s attempt to make Biden’s gaffe humorous and endearing while soliciting donations was a flop:

“In case you missed last night’s debate, Joe meant to say ‘Text Joe to 30330’ but left a word out,” clarified the campaign via email. “Oops.” 

It continued:

“The funny part is we text Joe all the time about emails like this. The next time we text him, we want him to know how many grassroots donations have come in.

“So whether it’s $3.03, $30.33, or $303.30, Joe will love to hear that supporters like you are chipping in what they can to this campaign.”

To add insult to injury, the website “Joe30330.com” is run by a Pete Buttigieg supporter.

5. ‘POOR KIDS AND WHITE KIDS’

Joe Biden clearly thinks all black children are poor, or that all white children are rich. Or both. Who knows? Probably not even Joe Biden.

Speaking in Iowa to an Asian and Latino Coalition PAC, he said: “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids”.

His campaign declared the comments as a mistake and accused the Trump campaign of being “disingenuous” for sharing the video. The full video. “Disingenuous”. Think about that.

Then think about how many column inches or television segments would have been dedicated to such a gaffe if it came from the mouth of President Trump.

April Ryan would have been thumping the CNN news desk demanding reparations… or something.

6. HEALTHCARE

While discussing his healthcare policy at a town hall event in Hanover, NH, he informed prospective voters that “If you’re not satisfied, you have another option, high-quality options. The public option will be available in my plan”.

However, he described the “public option” as not being “quality”, instead only “affordable”. 

In the same speech where Biden suggested his healthcare plan would not be “quality” he also added that “folks in the working class … will increase their premiums”. He followed up by clarifying: “excuse me, will increase the generosity of the premium tax credit they now get.”

Sigh. The list goes on.

7. G8… G7… GEE WHIZ.

While criticizing Trump’s conduct at the G7 summit, he referred to the meeting between the world’s seven largest advanced economies as the “G8”.

G8, short for “Group of Eight”, was the name of the inter-governmental summit from 1997 to 2014, until Russia was disinvited from the group.

Sleepy Joe can’t keep up with a change from five years ago. But he still wants to be Commander in Chief.

8. WHERE AM I?

In true Abraham Simpson style, the Democrat Party’s front runner has also started to forget where he is.

During a press conference in Keene, New Hampshire, about his impression of the town, he told reporters he had “been here a number of times”. 

When asked how he felt about being in Keene (again, in NEW HAMPSHIRE), he replied: “What’s not to like about Vermont in terms of the beauty of it. What a neat town!”

So neat!

And these are just some the gaffes that the cameras have caught.

While speaking at a California fundraiser, Biden left attendees bemused when he mislabeled the locations of recent mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio as “tragic events in Houston today and also in Michigan the day before”. 

At a Delaware fundraiser, he boasted about accusing President Donald Trump of fanning “the flames of white supremacy”, telling the crowd he made the comments in Burlington, Vermont, rather than Burlington, Iowa.

Biden’s only been in the race for just four months, and this is the treasure trove he’s already delivered.

We’re looking forward to the rest of the campaign, of course. But not so much to a Biden presidency, which would inevitably lead to the former VP trying to find his desk in the west wing of a local D.C. White Castle, instead of the White House.

Natalie Winters is a freelance writer and tweets at @NatalieGWinters

Kamala Harris in Free Fall.

Kamala Harris appeared to be the ideal “woke” Democratic Party presidential candidate.

As a person of color, a woman, and a child of immigrants, she “checked all the boxes” and tread the line between moderate and progressive comparatively better than the rest of the field. 

The most recent CNN poll – approved by the Democrat Party itself – tells another story. Kamala Harris is monumentally unpopular, even within her own party.

To call her loss of nearly 3 out of 4 supporters over just two months a “free fall” is probably an understatement.

https://twitter.com/RaheemKassam/status/1163804492678291456

Some think the decline can be attributed to fellow candidate Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-HI) takedown of Harris over her controversial criminal justice record at the second Democratic presidential debate.

It’s hardly true, sadly.

While it made for great television, Harris’s decline predated the debate and Tulsi exchange.

Such reasoning also excuses Harris’s inauthenticity as being culpable for her unpopularity.

After all, Harris was never a frontrunner because of her groundbreaking policies. It was her “intersectional” identity that was her comparative advantage. Behind this facade there isn’t much substance for Democratic voters to latch onto. 

FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver’s analysis of a recent Quinnipiac Poll shows that “there’s no single group of Democrats—say wealthy or young or black” among whom Harris is polling at higher than 10 percent.” 

Her rapidly declining support is a hodgepodge of people from different demographic groups. In other words, she has no real base.

For this election cycle, it’s no longer enough to be a woman of color.

The field is so big that each of Harris’s’ intersectional attributes is not unique. There are several other candidates that are also black, female, or have immigrant backgrounds.

Policy wise, she easily gets “out-woked” by her more far-left counterparts like Sen. Warren (D-MA) or Sen. Sanders (D-VT), while Biden reigns supreme with the title of “moderate”.

Rehearsed videos of her expressing admiration for her new campaign bus won’t win voters back:

“Cool” merch won’t do the trick, either. Her decision to sell shirts emblazoned with “That Little Girl Was Me” only angered voters, making her personal attack on Joe Biden’s bussing position appear inauthentic. 

Harris is learning the hard way: what goes up must come down. 

Natalie Winters is a freelance writer