President Joe Biden likes to carry cash around to slip to small children, so they can buy ice cream.
This is all part of Biden’s “mission to connect” in the days leading up to the midterms, according to a glowing report by The Associated Press’ White House correspondent, Zeke Miller, who chronicled a mission that is carried out “one hug and one selfie at a time” on the part of the campaigner.
“If President Joe Biden could greet every American this way, longtime allies say, his approval ratings would soar,” Miller writes.
You see, as Biden “has never been at his best in big speeches, where his delivery can be stilted, his stories sometimes meandering,” Miller continued, giving what we might say is an incredibly generous description of Biden’s public speaking, it’s “the end of his speech that often marks the beginning of Biden’s favorite part of an event — the rope line, in the parlance of political operatives.”
“He whirls around, scans the crowd and zeroes in on his first target for a one-on-one connection,” he wrote.
One of these “targets” might include, for example, “a small child.”
“Biden likes to carry some cash, so he can discretely slip kids a few dollars and encourage them to buy ice cream,” Miller noted, almost as an aside, before going on to give several other fluffy examples of the glad-handing the president has “perfected through decades” of deploying the campaign tactic.
Apparently, he’s also “perfected the selfie arm.”
But if you’re like me, you’re probably still stuck on the whole giving-little-kids-money-to-buy-ice-cream thing, which isn’t a great look for someone who’s been criticized as “Creepy Uncle Joe” for the many video clips of him touching women and young children.
Is Joe Biden’s behavior toward children unacceptable?
Yet this was part of the puffed-up image a former Biden “body man” sought to convey for Miller’s totally-not-partisan report on the apparent virtues of the president’s fondness for schmoozing with people who voluntarily go to campaign events to see him speak, as though with a crumbling economy, threats of nuclear war and a crime-ridden, insecure border, this might actually be of interest to the voting public.
President Biden indeed has a fondness for ice cream, children and giving ice cream to children.
He’s fond of stopping to visit ice cream shops while on the campaign trail or when he should otherwise be president-ing, he’s always petting and making awkward comments to children during these “rope lines” and other photo ops, and he said during a speech last year that he described as “boring, boring, boring” (yes, his own speech) that any children in attendance were owed ice cream.
Imagine if Biden drew the press to the border like he does with ice cream parlor photo ops.
Staged and creepy—and not necessarily in that order. No one wants to watch this old man eat ice cream and troll kids. pic.twitter.com/UQgrgACQKq
— Tosca Austen (@ToscaAusten) October 17, 2022
A month earlier, Biden delayed a speech to make sure that two 5-year-olds in attendance got ice cream before he began.
Biden delays the beginning of his speech to make sure young girls in the audience get ice cream:
“Almost 5 years old coming to hear the president speak. My lord. In my faith we call that purgatory.” pic.twitter.com/k5bJth96qk
— The Recount (@therecount) June 1, 2021
While Miller’s report was clearly designed to present the image of an effective campaign tactic, a right-leaning British tabloid The Daily Mail noticed the ice-cream-children weirdness, as did a number of sharp-eyed social media users.
I’m sorry this is not normal: “It might be a small child — Biden likes to carry some cash so he can discretely slip kids a few dollars and encourage them to buy ice cream.” https://t.co/WsgkKhxND8
— Victoria Coates (@VictoriaCoates) October 24, 2022
Biden’s supposedly effective glad-handing — by discreetly greasing the palms of the children the public has come to expect him to otherwise sniff and touch — doesn’t provide the best optics for Democrats hoping to keep the president’s questionable behavior out of voters’ minds with the midterm elections fast approaching.
