How many MORE gaffes can we expect during Biden's run? From calling out a dead congresswoman to revealing he had cancer and calling a student a 'lying, dog-faced pony soldier' - DailyMail.com breaks down 80-year-old Joe's most cringeworthy moments
President Joe Biden has a decades long history of making gaffes. As he enters the 2024 race, DailyMail.com has tracked some of the weirdest blunders. They include looking for a dead congresswoman, telling a paraplegic to stand up and calling an event attendee a 'lying, dog-faced pony soldier'
By Nikki Schwab
Daily Mail
April 25, 2023
Republicans are demanding President Joe Biden apologize after asking a crowd at a hunger conference to point out Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski - almost two months after she was killed in a car crash in Indiana
President Joe Biden's brand, at best, is folksy and, at worst, is creepy and cringeworthy as his decades in politics have been marked with a number of noteworthy gaffes.
From calling out out to a dead congresswoman during a speech, to suggesting he has cancer, DailyMail.com charted some of Biden's most awkward moments from his previous presidential runs and his time in the White House as he launches his 2024 reelection bid.
In the past, even some of his staunchest allies have expressed a wariness over whether his proneness for gaffes could impact his political future.
Former President Barack Obama reportedly remarked to a Democrat during Biden's 2020 run, 'Don't underestimate Joe's ability to f*** things up,' according to Politico.
Neera Tanden, who now works in the Biden White House, sang a similar tune when Biden was mulling a 2016 primary bid against Hillary Clinton.
'The good thing about a Biden run is that he would make Hillary look so much better,' Tanden told John Podesta, another Clinton-turned-Biden adviser, in a hacked email that was distributed by Wikileaks.
A LIFE-CHANGING GAFFE
Biden was elected to the U.S. Senate at age 29 and mounted his first presidential bid at age 44 in 1987.
If he was elected to the presidency, he would have become the second youngest person to take office after President John F. Kennedy.
But just three months in, his campaign was derailed thanks to a plagiarism scandal, as Biden omitted crediting British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock during two speeches. He previously remembered to use Kinnock's name.
That gaffe cost him his first chance at the White House in 1988.
He wouldn't run again until two decades later.
CALLING OBAMA 'ARTICULATE' AND OTHER RACIAL GAFFES
Biden ran a second time for the White House in 2008.
He started out that race with an eyebrow-raising compliment about the man who would eventually put him on the ticket.
'I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a storybook, man,' Biden said as he filed his paperwork to launch his second presidential campaign on January 31, 2007.
The remark was interpreted as racist. Biden later apologized and said he was taken out of context.
But Biden had already gotten in hot water in the run-up to his announcement in July 2006 by saying, 'You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.'
And then when Biden was running for the White House in the 2020 cycle, he got flack from Sen. Cory Booker, a 2020 hopeful who is black, for talking about how there was 'civility' in the Senate, despite some members of the Democratic Party being segregationists.
Put on the spot, Biden refused to apologize.
'Apologize for what?' the former vice president said. 'Cory should apologize. He knows better. There's not a racist bone in my body. I've been involved in civil rights my whole career.'
'STAND UP' AND 'WHERE'S JACKIE?'
After his 2008 White House bid crumbled, Biden was given another chance at a political promotion.
In August 2008, Democratic nominee Obama announced his decision to put Biden, then 65, on the ticket as his vice presidential pick.
Several weeks in, The New York Times profiled Biden on the campaign trail noting that while the then-senator was 'an experienced, serious and smart man' yet he 'does say some curious thing.'
The author later described Biden as a 'verbal wrecking crew.'
Wheelchair-bound Missouri state Sen. Chuck Graham was told to stand up by Biden
The most cringeworthy: asking paraplegic Missouri state Sen. Chuck Graham to stand.
'Chuck, stand up, let the people see you,' the vice presidential hopeful said at the time. He quickly realized the now late Graham used a wheelchair. 'Oh, God love ya. What am I talking about?' Biden mused.
Biden made an equally awkward mistake in September when he called out 'Where's Jackie?' during the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health.
He was referring to Rep. Jackie Walorski, who had perished in a car crash in August.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre tried to explain away the blunder by saying that Biden was 'acknowledging her incredible work' and that she was 'on top of mind,' instead of saying that the president forgot about her death or there was staff error.
COLORFUL LANGUAGE
Once Obama and Biden got into the White House, getting healthcare fixed was a top priority - and the Democrats pulled it off with the passage of the Affordable Care Act.
The most memorable moment from that signing: the four-letter word that came out of the vice president's mouth.
'This is a big f***ing deal,' Biden told Obama, his phrasing picked up on hot mic.
Cut to his own presidency and the president has used some colorful language.
'What a stupid son of a b****,' Biden remarked in January 2022, after hearing a question posed by Fox News' Peter Doocy.
Joe Biden called a college student at his town hall Sunday a 'lying, dog-faced pony soldier.' The comments were sparked after Biden asked the student if she had even been to a caucus before
STRANGE AUDIENCE INTERACTIONS
Besides his occasional tussle with the press, the president has also had some not-so-normal interactions with members of the audience.
During his 2020 campaign, Biden called a woman a 'lying dog-faced pony soldier' when she told him she had been to a presidential caucus.
In July 2022 at the White House, Biden told the father of a Parkland shooting victim to 'sit down' at a celebration marking the passage of bipartisan gun legislation.
'You'll hear what I have to say,' the president told Manuel Oliver, who was heckling the president for not doing more to curb gun violence.
To add insult to injury, Biden said the Parkland massacre happened in 1918 instead of 100 years later.
FLUBS ON THE FOREIGN STAGE
In office, Biden has made bold announcements about Russia and China - with White House staff quickly having to walk them back.
During a speech in Warsaw, Poland in March 2022, Biden expressed he was for regime change in Russia.
'For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power,' he said of Russian President Vladimir Putin.'
Almost immediately a White House official told reporters Biden didn't mean it.
'He was not discussing Putin's power in Russia, or regime change,' an unnamed aide said.
Two months later, the White House was forced to play take-backsies again after Biden told journalists 'yes ... that's a commitment we made,' when asked if the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if China invaded.
Biden was appearing at a press conference in Tokyo, Japan when he explained that 'the idea that [Taiwan] can be taken by force ... is just not appropriate. It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in Ukraine.'
The next day, Biden insisted that he did not change U.S. policy toward Taiwan.
HEALTH OVERSHARES
In July in a speech about climate change, Biden casually told a crowd he had cancer.
'You had to put on your windshield wipers to get, literally, the oil slick off the window,' he said of his childhood, growing up near refineries. 'That's why I and so damn many other people I grew up have cancer.'
The White House played clean up by saying that Biden was referring to 'non-melanoma skin cancers' he had years ago - but it was unclear why the president used the present tense.
Earlier this year, the White House said that Biden had a skin lesion removed from his chest that was a basal cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer.
The White House doctor said no further treatment was needed.
The president has also spoken several times about surviving cranial aneurysms in 1988 in odd detail.
'They had to take the top of my head of a couple times, to see if I had a brain,' the president joked at an event last month.
A month before when he spoke about his hospitalization he claimed he had a nurse who would breathe on him while he was in recovery.
'I had a nurse named Pearl Nelson. She'd come in and do things I don't think you learn in nursing school,' he said. 'She'd whisper in my ear, I couldn't understand, but she'd whisper and she'd lean down. And actually breathe on me to make sure there was a connection, a human connection.'
As he departed Joint Base Andrews for Atlanta, the president fell up the steps of Air Force One in March 2021. He's stumbled up the steps twice already this year
Secret Service agents help Biden up after his foot got caught and he fell sideways off his bike at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware
LITERAL STUMBLES
Several months into his administration, Biden lost his footing.
As he departed Joint Base Andrews for Atlanta, the president fell up the steps of Air Force One.
This year he fell on the stairs again, twice in a matter of weeks.
First was as he boarded the plane after his whirlwind, secret trip to Ukraine - with a 10-hour train ride in and out of Kyiv - and a speech in Warsaw. He quickly stumbled again as he departed Selma, Alabama in March.
And in June, Biden memorably got his foot stuck in his toe clamp, and took a sideways fall off his bike as he was greeting onlookers in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
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