President Biden‘s critics dusted off the “Creepy Joe” tag after the Democrat’s latest puzzling interaction with a young girl at a public event.
At a dinner Sunday to honor service members and their families, Mr. Biden approached a young girl and declared, “I love your ears,” referring to what appeared to be her Mickey Mouse ears.
He asked her name. She shyly answered, “Catherine.”
“What a beautiful name. That’s my mommy’s name,” Mr. Biden said. “How old are you, 17?”
The girl shook her head. Another girl answered: “No, she’s six.” He replied in mock surprise, “Six?”
The Associated Press reported that he “lightheartedly bent down and joked with a 6-year-old” at the “Friendsgiving” dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, but commentators on social media characterized the exchange as another example of Mr. Biden‘s cringeworthy behavior.
“Can someone please keep this man away from children?” asked PragerU host C.J. Pearson on X.
The Proud Elephant account tweeted in all capital letters: “this guy is a creep!!!” Other comments included “ultra cringe moment,” “pure cringe,” and “beyond creepy.”
RedState contributor Nick Arama urged Mr. Biden to “stop the sidling up to little girls; it continues to just be downright creepy.”
Biden to a little girl: “How old are you? 17?”
Child: “6”
Biden: “6??!”
Can someone please keep this man away from children? pic.twitter.com/CSLIdaHBtN
— CJ Pearson (@thecjpearson) November 19, 2023
Collin Rugg, co-owner of Trending Politics, quipped: “I’m surprised he didn’t try to sniff her,” referring to previous episodes in which Mr. Biden appeared to smell or kiss the hair of girls and women at public events.
For example, during Sen. Chris Coons’ 2015 swearing-in ceremony, Mr. Biden gripped the Democratic senator’s 13-year-old daughter Maggie by the arm, whispered into her ear, and kissed her on the head as she leaned away from him.
Mr. Coons later told Fox News Sunday that “she doesn’t think the vice president is creepy.”
Other photos from similar ceremonies show Mr. Biden kissing the top of a young girl’s head and rearranging the long brown hair of another young girl.
At former Defense Secretary Ash Carter’s 2015 swearing-in, Mr. Biden stood behind Mr. Carter’s wife Stephanie, placed his hands on her shoulders and whispered in her ear. She looked uncomfortable, but later said Mr. Biden was offering his support.
Those incidents occurred when Mr. Biden was vice president, but in July he was again accused of creepiness by nibbling on the shoulder of a young girl in Finland as her mother held her. The girl turned away before he could give her a peck on the head.
The Sunday dinner at Naval Support Activity Hampton Roads wasn’t the first time Mr. Biden has compared a girl to an older teenager.
In 2021, he told a veteran’s daughter, “I love those barrettes in your hair, man.”
“I’ll tell you what, look at her—she looks like she’s 19 years old sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed,” Mr. Biden said from the podium, referring to a girl who was reportedly elementary-school age.
In 2019, former Democratic congressional candidate Lucy Flores said that Mr. Biden put his hands on her shoulders, smelled her hair, and planted a “big slow kiss” on the back of her head at a 2014 campaign appearance.
After that, she said, “pictures started to surface of Vice-President Biden getting uncomfortably close with women and young girls.”
“Biden nuzzling the neck of the Defense secretary’s wife; Biden kissing a senator’s wife on the lips; Biden whispering in women’s ears; Biden snuggling female constituents,” said Ms. Flores in an op-ed in The Cut.
“I saw obvious discomfort in the women’s faces, and Biden, I’m sure, never thought twice about how it made them feel. I knew I couldn’t say anything publicly about what those pictures surfaced for me; my anger and my resentment grew,” she wrote.
In 2019, the pro-Trump Great America PAC released a one-minute video called “Creepy Joe Biden” showing his up-close interactions with girls and women.
