Biden Team Pushes Back On Criticism Of Out-Of-Context Obama Assassination Gaffe

By Nicole Lafond
August 24, 2019 4:41 pm

The gaffe-prone former vice president was roundly criticized on Twitter for a strange remark in which he questioned what might have happened if former President Barack Obama had been assassinated.

Former Vice President and 2020 front runner Joe Biden was at an event in New Hampshire, talking about the new generation of young people who have been energized to political activism over President Trump’s election. Biden compared the resistance movement to similar activism he’d seen after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

“I only had two political heroes, one hero was my dad, my two political heroes were Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy,” Biden said during an event in New Hampshire on Friday “My senior semester, they were both shot and killed. … Imagine what would have happened if, God forbid, if Barack Obama had been assassinated after becoming the de facto nominee, What would have happened in America? Things changed.”

Biden was dragged on Twitter for the strange remark, but his campaign team pushed back, saying it was just a gaffe-y way of pointing out the trauma of those past assassinations.

Matt – He was putting into perspective, for the young folks in the room, about how traumatic the assassinations of RFK and MLK were for the country. This tweet is chasing clicks. https://t.co/K7cY4NeWyM

— Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) August 24, 2019

This is a sleazy headline. He was talking about the turmoil of the late 60s and asking young people to imagine what the MLK and RFK assassinations did to the country. People deserve responsibility from their news outlets. https://t.co/kMHhoQyoAu

— Kate Bedingfield (@KBeds) August 24, 2019

I would challenge reporters tweeting about this to ask a single person in that room today what their takeaway from the event was.

I guarantee it wasn’t this. https://t.co/CW1e7J0ZN1

— Meira Bernstein (@Meirabb) August 24, 2019