Presidential candidate Joe Biden recently touched a young woman’s arm to get her attention at a campaign event. But if you get your information from the Twitter feed of Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, you’d think Biden assaulted the young woman.
My team just forwarded this video to me
Watch former Vice President Biden forcefully grab one of our young field staffers at yesterday’s Iowa State Fair after she asked him how many genders there are pic.twitter.com/1qmpJxJlzO
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) August 9, 2019
Kirk shared a video from the Iowa State Fair, a major campaign stop Biden attended last week. The video shows Biden making his way through a packed crowd, with bodies bumping everywhere and hardly enough space to breathe. A young Turning Point activist approaches the candidate and asks him an obviously antagonistic question about how many genders there are.
Biden answers “at least three.” When she presses him further, he says with a smile “Don’t mess with me kid.” As she walks away, the candidate remembers a point he wants to add, so he reaches out for her arm to get her attention, then says that, by the way, he was one of the first politicians to support gay marriage.
Biden shouldn’t have touched the young lady, especially given his track record of seeming creepy with women. But still, sounds like no big deal, right?
Well, Kirk and his fellow Turning Point activists decided to cry assault, and pushed out an obviously scripted video where the young woman reads from a prepared script accusing Biden of “grabbing” her and saying she is “very mad” someone would “actually treat her like that.” The framing of the viral video, in a Kirk tweet approaching two million views, implies that Biden assaulted the young activist.
This is ridiculous. It is an obvious smear by a group of known bad-faith actors, and is completely unfair to Biden. And almost all right-wing political pundits with a shred of intellectual honesty are willing to admit as much.
I am legitimately saddened to see conservative campus organizations that used to stand for limited government and conservative ideals be reduced to bum-rushing and shouting down Democratic candidates for cheap “gotchas.” Not a good look.
— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) August 11, 2019
Biden did not assault this young woman. Was it unwise for him to touch her? Yes. Did it cross any serious line? Not even close.
Kirk relentlessly defends Trump, despite 17 women having accused the president of inappropriate behavior, and despite his notorious admission — caught on tape — that he grabs women without their consent.
This is what makes Kirk’s stunt so obviously political. He’s not seriously concerned about how politicians treat women, he just saw a viral moment in the making and once again chose outrage mongering over intellectual honesty.
This is a shame, and hurts the women actually assaulted by politicians who are brave enough to come forward. Evidently Kirk and some of his colleagues at Turning Point USA don’t care about actual victims, at least, not when there’s a chance to smear Joe Biden.
