Column
We Can’t Dismiss Joe Biden’s Gaffes as a Product of Age
How can Americans trust Biden with the country’s well-being if they can’t trust he’ll take criticism without resorting to strange insults?
Does anyone really find Joe Biden charming anymore?
At a campaign event in New Hampshire this weekend, the former vice president called a young woman who asked him about his poor showing in Iowa a “lying dog-faced pony soldier.” Yes, I’m serious. A lying dog-faced pony soldier. The insult sounds vaguely Trumpian — especially given the president’s penchant for calling women dogs — but mostly it’s just nonsensical.
Biden, who has used the phrase before, attributes the line to a John Wayne movie — incorrectly, according to sleuths at Slate. A spokesperson for the faltering candidate tweeted that it was a well-received joke, though the college student on the receiving end of the bizarre barb didn’t seem to feel the same. Madison Moore, a 21-year old economics student at Mercer University, told the Washington Post, “Joe Biden has been performing incredibly poorly in this race. His inability to answer a simple question from a nobody college student like me only exacerbates that reality.”
