Former Vice President Joe Biden has long fantasized about beating up Donald Trump, but during the 2020 Democratic primary, he began challenging voters who challenged him. He called an Iowa farmer a “damn liar,” for example, then challenged him to an IQ test and a push-up contest.
At a campaign event at a factory in Michigan on Tuesday, a voter asked Biden a tough but fair question about how he hoped to get the votes of gun enthusiasts who are union members. What followed must be seen to be believed.
Better angle of Joe Biden shouting at an Auto Worker for standing up for the Second Amendment pic.twitter.com/qJlWLRPc9i
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) March 10, 2020
Biden tells the voter he’s full of “sh-t,” wags his finger in his face, and when the voter complains, he suggests that they go outside.
Many people have focused on the erroneous comments Biden frequently makes about guns. He falsely claims he has no desire to limit AR-15s (which he calls AR-14s) but he previously told Anderson Cooper he did.
‘To gun owners out there who say, well, a Biden Administration means they’re going to come for my guns,’ Cooper asks.
‘Bingo, you’re right if you have an ‘assault weapon,” which is his term for AR-15s.
Leaving aside the more significant problem of Biden’s position on the 2nd Amendment, Joe Biden’s candidacy is based around a media-enabled narrative that he is a decent man who will bring civility and normalcy back to Washington. He promises to bring unity to the country.
Such threatening behavior suggests he might not be the candidate to do that.
I’m not opposed to more physical fighting in politics, although I wish it were the bad politicians getting roughed up more than the voters. But I can’t get past the issue that Biden keeps picking on people who would most definitely destroy him in an actual fight.
If you watch that voter video above again, you see that the gun enthusiast guy is a strapping man with a very nice beard. He handles himself extremely well. He asks a legitimate question about gun rights and reacts calmly even when he gets told he’s “full of sh-t.” Biden gets more and more belligerent, downplaying that he just a week ago named Beto O’Rourke his gun czar. Here’s a video of O’Rourke saying, “H-ll, yes we are going to take your AR-15.”
The young bearded voter very calmly tells Biden that his physical intimidation is inappropriate, at which point Biden challenges to take him outside.
Never Trumpists such as David Frum and Ana Navarro praised Biden’s threat. “Kind of amazing that anybody thinks this video makes Biden look anything other than terrific,” Frum said. “I love it. This is exactly the Fighting Joe I want to see show-up and tell Trump he’s full of it,” Navarro said of Biden’s attack on a voter who is not Donald Trump.
But no one quite noticed that Biden for whatever reason keeps picking on people who could quite clearly obliterate him in a fight. It’s not even a testament to the voters he’s picking on, although in this case the voter appeared quite capable of a beat-down.
It’s that Joe Biden is 77 years old. He was never particularly known as a physically intimidating or capable person and he’s definitely not one now. He would be seriously injured in these fights he keeps seeking! We are quite clearly in an Izzy Mandelbaum situation.
If we’re going to bring back duels or whatever he’s going for here, he should probably challenge only other politicians, not voters, and he should start thinking much more strategically about who he could reasonably take on. At his age and with his physical situation, I’d stick to octogenarians with underlying health problems.