Joe Biden's penchant for gaffes and cringy moments involving girls has resurfaced, as the Democrat presidential candidate told a group of “beautiful young ladies” that he wants to “see them dancing when they're four years older.”
“The good news for me is, I'm here,” Biden told a group in Miami on Monday. “The bad news for you is, I'm coming back. And I want to see these beautiful young ladies, I want to see them dancing when they're four years older, too.”
Biden was referring to a group of girls who had performed before he spoke at Miami's Little Haiti Cultural Center. He apparently was trying to make a point about returning to the area in four years, when he expects to be campaigning for re-election.
The comment might have been seen as inartful for another candidate. But for Biden – whom the critics have nicknamed “Creepy Joe” over videos of him touching young girls and women at public events and making awkward comments – it was ammunition for mockery.
Tara Reade, the former staffer who accused then-senator Biden of sexually assaulting her in the early 1990s, was among those whose eyebrows were raised by the dancing comment. “This is not aging well,” Reade tweeted on Monday night.
One commenter called the incident “extremely creepy,” while another quipped, “I wonder how many times he watched 'Cuties' on Netflix.” Still another tweeted, “Imagine thinking that by adding in four years, you sound less creepy.”
But some Twitter users dismissed Biden's comment as just a way of saying he will be back in 2024 for his re-election campaign. Music and travel writer Paul Gibbins said he inferred from the statement that Biden wants to be running for president again in four years, not, “I want these girls here when they're of legal age.” Gibbins added that although “that's a terrible way of phrasing it,” he was annoyed by people taking Biden's words “out of context when there's already so much fully legit stuff out there.”
After at least four women came forward in early 2019 to allege that Biden had touched them inappropriately, the former vice president promised to be “more mindful about respecting personal space” because “social norms are changing.” But just a month later, at a campaign event in Houston, he told a 10-year-old girl that she was “good looking” and put his hands on her shoulders. A couple of weeks after that, he told the brothers of a 13-year-old Iowa girl to “keep the guys away from your sister.”
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