“I am a gaffe machine,” Joe Biden admitted in December 2018. Why deny it? The man speaks as though he were performing on Saturday Night Live.
Biden, who was elected to the U.S. Senate from Delaware in 1973, has a pattern of odd, ill-judged, plagiarized or politically problematic comments and actions. Here’s a look at some of the standouts.
‘Wait—your mom’s still alive’
At a St. Patrick’s Day reception for the then Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen in 2010, Biden noted that the visitor’s mother had lived in America.
“His mom lived in Long Island for 10 years or so, god rest her soul, and, er, although she’s, wait—your mom’s still alive. It was your dad [who] passed. God bless her soul. I gotta get this straight,” Biden said.
‘Stand up’
During a 2008 campaign rally in Missouri, Biden asked the audience to applaud State Senator Chuck Graham.
“Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see you,” Biden said, gesturing for Graham to stand.
Graham, a paraplegic following a car accident, is confined to a wheelchair.
“Oh, god love ya, what am I talking about,” Biden said, realizing his mistake. “I tell you what, you’re making everybody else stand up though, pal. Thank you very, very much…You can tell I’m new.”
How do you spell ‘jobs’?
During a 2008 campaign rally, Biden said: “Look, John’s last-minute 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.”
Plagiarized Neil Kinnock
Biden dropped out of the 1988 presidential race after reports that he’d copied a speech delivered months earlier by British Labour Party politician Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock said: “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Pointing to his wife in the audience:] Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?”
Biden said:
“I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? [Pointing to his wife in the audience:] Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?”
In earlier speeches Biden had credited Kinnock—but in any case, he misrepresented his backround. Several months after ending his campaign, Biden was treated for two brain aneurysms; there was speculation that the then-undiagnosed illness might have contributed to his plagiarism.
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