Joe Biden was in the midst of his “No Malarkey” tour across Iowa when some old guy tried to give him some malarkey.
But Uncle Joe wasn’t having any of that there malarkey. Not one spoonful.
The 77-year-old former vice president was confronted by an 83-year-old farmer on Friday during a New Hampton, Iowa, town hall.
“We all know Trump has been messing around in Ukraine,” the man said, then added: “You, on the other hand, sent your son over there to get a job and work for a gas company and [who] had no experience in natural gas. You’re selling access to the president just like he is.”
Biden exploded. “You’re a damn liar, man. That’s not true. And no one has ever said that,” Biden said as he approached the man menacingly.
Then Biden, as he does, challenged the man. “Let’s do push-ups together here, man. Let’s run. Let’s do whatever you want to do. Let’s take an IQ test.”
The former frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination went on to defend his son, who got paid $83,000 a month for serving on the board of a Ukrainian state natural gas company while Biden was vice president. “No one has said my son has done anything wrong,” Biden said, adding that he “did not on any occasion” do anything wrong and that “no one has ever said it.”
The exchange got feisty.
“I didn’t say you were doing anything wrong,” the man said.
“You said I set up my son to work on an oil company,” Biden fired back. “Isn’t that what you said? Get your words straight, Jack!
The man said he heard it on MSNBC, which caused Biden to explode again.
“You don’t hear that on MSNBC! You did not hear that at all,” Biden said. “Look, I’m not going to get into an argument with you, man.”
Then Biden called the man “fat” (or sure seemed to, anyway, although Team Biden said the candidate said “facts”).
But it turns out the 83-year-old guy doesn’t take any malarkey, either.
“You don’t have any more backbone than Trump does,” he said.
The crowd booed.
“Any other questions?” the annoyed Biden said.
“Well, I’m not voting for you,” the man said.
“Well, I knew you weren’t,” Biden said. “You’re too old to vote for me.”
Biden now says maybe he shouldn’t have confronted the man.
“I probably shouldn’t have challenged him to pushups,” Biden said, according to Axios reporter Alexi McCammond.
“I probably shouldn’t have challenged him to pushups,” Biden says of his interaction with the man he called a “damn liar” yesterday. pic.twitter.com/JepqqsDdK1
— Alexi McCammond (@alexi) December 6, 2019
Symone Sanders, a senior Biden campaign official, tried to explain what happened.
“Let’s be clear RE: the exchange VP Biden had with a voter in Iowa earlier today: 1) the gentleman is a self-identified Warren supporter who said he would vote for the VP in a general election 2) his facts were flat-out wrong and 3) the crowd backed VP Biden up in his response,” Symone Sanders wrote on Twitter. “Any assertion VP Biden said a word about the gentleman’s appearance is making this something it is not. In the latter part of the exchange, the VP began to say ‘Look, facts’ then said ‘here’s the deal.’ If you’ve been to a Biden event, you’ve heard this before.”
“The reality is this – a reference was made to the ‘news’ today and I think we all know which outlet has continued to peddle the debunked conspiracy theories cooked up by Trump and Rudy Guiliani about Ukraine. These lies will not go unchecked & we’ll continue to lay out the facts,” she wrote.