Former Vice President Joe Biden didn’t take kindly to being compared to President Donald Trump over a contentious encounter he had with an Iowa voter last week.
In the latest sign that Biden has challenges to overcome with the progressive left, the 2020 Democratic contender was called out for his interaction with the man during an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition, when host Rachel Martin reminded Biden that he called the 83-year-old U.S. Marine vet a “damn liar” and challenged him to a push-up contest.
(The hard left candidates still in the race would never face such an aggressive line of questioning.)
The interview was held in an uncomfortably close setting of a booth, given Biden’s track record with intimate encounters. As he tried to laugh the incident off, Martin pressed to say, “And then you asked him for an IQ test.”
“He came along. What was he saying? He said he’s entitled to do this. He said, ‘You’re too old.’ He said, ‘You’re too old. I can’t vote for somebody as old as you,'” Biden said. “I said okay. And he was challenging me what kind of shape, and so I kidded. I said, ‘Want to do a push-up contest?’ I was joking. Look, I’m in pretty good shape.”
It was at this point that Martin dropped the T-word.
“Which is what Donald Trump says a lot, ‘Hey, you can’t take a joke, I was joking,'” she countered.
Biden’s demeanor quickly changed, taking on an angry tone as he wagged his finger in her face and said, “No, no, no, no, no. Don’t compare me to Donald Trump. Don’t do that!”
Martin stressed that people at the town hall made the comparison, but Biden rejected that assertion.
“Yes they did,” she insisted. “They said to me, the woman you met at the end, 94-year-old Mary said to me, ‘I was so disappointed in him.’ This is a direct quote. ‘That is not the Joe I know. He sounded like Donald Trump in that clip.'”
Biden tried to differentiate between himself and Trump, totally ignoring the example Martin just provided.
“What Donald Trump says, he makes fun of people. He belittles people. He lies. I don’t do any of those things. Period,” Biden said. “The fact of the matter is this guy stood up, and he was in fact, lying. And I just pointed out, ‘You’re a liar.’ It’s a fact, he lied. Period.”
In effect, Biden justified his behavior because he deemed the brazen voter to be a liar.
Martin stayed on the topic, reminding Biden of his previous calls for a need to restore civility, saying “it’s so important to so many people.”
This prompted an exchange that made the 77-year-old candidate sound like a kid.
“That’s not civil? To call someone who lied a liar?” he said.
“To call someone a ‘damn liar’? A voter? This isn’t Trump, President Trump,” Martin replied.
“But he’s lying!” Biden cried. “He’s lying. You acknowledge what he said wasn’t even true. None of the mainstream media believes any of that was true.”
The point he was making about the veteran lying was that the man said Biden “sent” his son, Hunter Biden, to work at the Ukrainian gas company.
Martin doggedly stressed it was Biden’s tone that people took exception to — much like the tone he was currently displaying. The candidate let her know he was ready to move on by saying, “My mother would say, ‘God love you, dear.'”
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Tom@bizpacreview.com
The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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