At a campaign event in Peterborough, New Hampshire on Monday Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden thanked “everybody under the age of 15” and promised them “something special” after his speech.
“I want to start off by thanking everybody under the age of 15. We owe you big, kiddo. I don’t know how you got here, but thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. But after this is over, come up and talk to me. Everybody under 15, you get something special today, because this has got to be boring, boring, boring for you. Thank you.”
Although the audience laughed and the remarks appeared innocuous, Biden’s words could be seen otherwise in a broader context. (RELATED: Joe Biden In 2018: ‘Nothing Justifies Touching A Woman Without Her Consent’)
Only on Sunday, at another campaign stop in New Hampshire, Biden was stopped in his tracks by a heckler who shouted, “Don’t touch kids, you pervert!”
After the initial shock, Biden broke into a smile and proclaimed, “All right, well you know, this is a democracy,” he said.
But the former Vice President has also made bizarre comments in the past about his engagement with children. In June 2017, he described kids rubbing the wet hair on his legs during the time he served as a pool lifeguard.
“I got a lot of — I got hairy legs that turn … blonde in the sun,” Biden said. “And the kids used to come up and reach in the pool and rub my leg down so it was straight and then watch the hair come back up again. They’d look at it.” (RELATED: Biden Team Blames ‘Right Wing Trolls’ For Creepy Joe Photos)
Biden entered his presidential campaign under the cloud of sexual misconduct allegations, including a complaint from former Democratic Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores that Biden inappropriately kissed her and smelled her hair.
Former Nevada Assemblywoman Lucy Flores (D-Las Vegas) (L) introduces U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at a get-out-the-vote rally at a union hall on November 1, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
When asked about this incident and others, Biden told “The View,” “Look, I’m really sorry if what I did in talking to them and trying to console that in fact they took it a different way. It’s my responsibility to make sure that I bend over backwards to try to understand how not to do that.”