Following are actual Joe Biden quotes from his long, peculiar service as senator, vice president, presidential candidate, technical president, and whatever his position has been at whatever the Biden family’s international business is. For each quote, I’ve attempted an interpretation.
I once heard a linguistics scholar describe how problematic the translation of ancient Chinese pictographic language to a modern language can be. Translating Biden speech into coherent English might be even more challenging. I’ve tried to meet the challenge here, but after a while your head starts to hurt.
JB — 6 / 2006 “In Delaware, the largest growth of population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-11 or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I’m not joking.”
DB interpretation: Joe often blurts out “not joking” to indicate that he’s dead serious. In this case maybe he was dead comedic.
JB — 5 / 2019 “I would in fact make sure that there is — we immediately surge to the border, all those people are seeking asylum.”
DB interpretation: Awkward as this latter-day Mr. Magoo message was, it was easily translated. People living in politburo-pitiful economies run by leftist despots, especially those interested in easy access to the entitlements of America’s still mainly capitalist economy, understood it:
“Hey, if you want lots of free stuff and don’t want to wait in that years-long line for legal immigration — c’mon in!” (The message was also heard clearly by fentanyl peddlers, sex traffickers, Mexican gangs, “coyote” human smugglers, other assorted criminals, and everyone who dreams of future dreamer status.)
JB — 3 / 2020 “Sounds corny, not a joke, think about it. We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women created by — go, you know, you know the thing!”
DB interpretation: Trying to rev up the crowd at a campaign rally by reciting the most famous sentence in the Declaration of Independence, Joe blew a gasket well short of “the pursuit of Happiness.” But at least this un-joke demonstrated that, while celebrating a historic document that does not refer to women, Joe can alter it to show his interest in women. He’s interested in girls too . . . and how nice their hair smells.
JB — 1 / 2007 “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.”
DB interpretation: While gushing Obama enthusiasm, Joe sure seemed to be criticizing the intelligence and personal hygiene of pre-Obama African-American politicians. Doesn’t that sound — what’s the word — racist?
Actually, at the first Democrat presidential nomination debate in 2019, candidate Sen. Kamala Harris angrily criticized candidate Biden for his past opposition to racial-based school busing and buddying up to segregationist Dixiecrat senators. (Later Harris also said she believed accusations of sexual assault against Biden, then still later seemed not to believe them.)
Maybe one of Joe’s handlers let him know that Harris was seldom right about anything. Maybe he agreed with his handlers’ decision to to give her the vice-presidential nomination because he thought she made him look comparatively articulate and bright.
JB — 9 / 2008 “A man I’m proud to call my friend. A man who will be the next president of the United States. Barack America.”
DB interpretation: Joe’s admiration of Obama became even more storybook from 2007 to 2008. At this point in the campaign, he seemed to be riding the huge wave of progressive belief in Barack as a superhero, the left’s Captain America.
JB — 5 / 2020 (to radio host Charlamagne tha God) “I tell you what, if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”
DB interpretation: I wonder what Lincoln would have thought.
JB — 9 / 2008 “I’m told Chuck Graham, state senator, is here. Stand up, Chuck, let ’em see you. Oh, God love you. What am I talking about?”
DB interpretation: State Senator Graham was in fact there in the front row at a Biden campaign rally. A paraplegic, he was sitting in a wheelchair. Always with the folksy charm, that Joe!
JB — 6 / 2020 “Now we have over 120 million dead from COVID.”
DB interpretation: Sympathetic journalists explained that Joe innocently confused “million” and “thousand.” I offer a deeper sympathy. I think Joe — confused in his time frame and the danger facing the country — was drifting off to a valid concern. He somehow foresaw over 120 million Americans soon facing the prospect of voting for either Trump or him and thinking it might be better to be dead.
JB — 9 / 2023 “I have never discussed with my son or my brother or anyone else anything having to do with their businesses, period.”
DB interpretation: My best effort to channel Inner Joe: “Pay no attention to those White House visitor logs and my bank records and Hunter’s laptop and the shell corporations and the $24 million in laundered foreign payments distributed to ten Biden family members and my emails under false identities. Ya gotta keep your eye on the ball: MAGA Republicans! Threats to democracy! Corn Pop! Not joking.”
JB — 9 / 1987 “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife who’s sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? . . . My ancestors . . . worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours.’’
DB interpretation: This speech, passionately delivered in Biden’s first presidential campaign, presented the personal history of a proud working-class man. That man was Neil Kinnock, a British politician, whose speech four months earlier was appropriated by Biden, pasting in his own name. (The football referred to in the original Kinnock speech was not American football.)
Biden actually presented someone else’s life as his own. Politicians often lie, stretch the truth, even make things up out of thin air, but only Biden could try to steal an autobiography.
JB — 6 / 2023 “It’s hard to tell, but [Putin’s] clearly losing the war in Iraq, losing the war at home.”
DB interpretation: Over a year into Putin’s Ukraine war, Joe seemed to think that war was being fought against Iraq. Presidents always have the “nuclear football” close by. Let’s hope Joe doesn’t try to kick it.
JB — 6 / 2022 “America is a nation that can be defined in a single word: asufutimaehaehfutbw.”
DB interpretation: Yes, over the past three years that’s been America’s defining word.
Loved the column…how pathetic that
some people think he has been doing a great job.
Thanks, Kevin! In the hours after Biden announced — or signed on to the announcement — his resignation, I wrote a variation on that article: “Ten Memorable Moments of the Biden Presidency.” I hope it gets taken by John Kass News, but if not, you can read it on curveball soon.