Joe Biden chided a man about wearing a face mask outside while walking a dog in his first organized appearance on the short-form video app TikTok.
In the video, created in collaboration with the Washington Post and posted on the paper’s TikTok profile, video producer Dave Jorgenson, who is in charge of the paper’s TikTok content and usually appears in the videos, put on headphones and starts listening to Biden’s campaign podcast, Here’s the Deal, while walking his dog outside.
“Dave, what the hell?” Biden says to him through the headphones. “I told you to wear your mask outside.”
The former vice president, 36-year Delaware senator, and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee then appears on the phone screen.
“You need to wear your mask outside. I don’t care if you’re just walking your dog,” he said.
While specific guidance on outdoor mask use varies by state and locality, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing a face covering “in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.”
President Trump has mocked Biden for wearing a mask in public. Biden said in an interview this week that Trump was an “absolute fool” for refusing to do the same.
Today’s first @washingtonpost quarantine TikTok features face mask awareness with @JoeBiden https://t.co/JTZJOZDqTb pic.twitter.com/fDAmurJ9Vn
— Dave Jorgenson (@davejorgenson) May 28, 2020
Some Democrats have worried that Biden is not adapting to or using social media such as TikTok enough since he is not able to hold traditional campaign events during the coronavirus pandemic, but his campaign says that it works hard not to overexpose the former vice president on social media.
“For us to try and force it by having him go on TikTok and ‘hit the woah’ or whatever, that just doesn’t compute with who the guy is,” Biden digital director Rob Flaherty told the Daily Beast. “And so, for us, it’s … how do we use these digital tools in ways that aren’t going to feel super weird for him to do?”
It helps to have an established brand post a TikTok video rather than the Biden campaign itself, both because it will reach more people and also because using an app from a Chinese-owned company could open the door to criticism.
The Washington Post collaborated with many other Democratic presidential candidates to produce TikTok videos, including New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, former Housing Secretary Julian Castro, and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
