Joe Biden asked his audience in New Hampshire to imagine the assassination of Barack Obama.
The comment came during a town hall event Friday in New Hampshire, meant to focus on healthcare. The Democratic presidential front-runner again brought up the assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., just days after he mistakenly said they were killed in the late 1970s instead of 1968.
Recommended Stories
“I have one hero who was my dad, but I have two political heroes were Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. My senior semester they were both shot and killed,” Biden, who served as Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017, said. “Imagine what would have happened if, God forbid, Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee. What would have happened in America?”
The 76-year-old was trying to make a point about becoming politically aware in the turbulent times of the late 1960s and 1970s, moving on to mention the deadly Kent State shootings during a Vietnam War protest in 1970. Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972.
Biden also said he was accused of being gay because he supported women’s rights in the 1970s.
“An entire generation was energized. We finally finished the Voting Rights Act. We finally got the Civil Rights Act back on the road. We finally were in a position where we started to begin the women’s movement, and began to treat women — I remember because I was such a big supporter of the E.R.A. in 1972, quote — to show you how things have changed, thank God — ‘Well, you know why Biden is for the E.R.A., he’s probably gay.’ Not a joke,” Biden said, referring to the Equal Rights Amendment.
Biden leads the polls in a still-crowded field of people seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. But Biden has repeatedly attracted embarrassing headlines with a series of gaffes within the past weeks, saying poor kids are “just as bright” as white kids and claiming he was vice president in 2018 during the Parkland, Florida mass school shooting, among other things.
