Joe Biden's "No Malarkey" Bus Tour

Overview

Joe Biden's "No Malarkey" Bus Tour refers to 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's campaign through Iowa in December of 2019 ahead of the February Iowa caucuses. Many have commented that the tour has been marred by several gaffes and odd moments thus far, including Biden biting his wife's finger.

Background

On November 30th, 2019, Biden announced his "No Malarkey" tour on Twitter by tweeting a picture of his campaign bus that featured the slogan^[1] (shown below).

Developments

People were quick to mock Biden's slogan. Twitter user @louisvirtel tweeted sarcastically, "All the kids at the malt shop are really gonna flip their lids over this one!" (shown below, left).^[3] User @scalzi^[4] wrote, "When they don't know OK Boomer is meant to be sarcastic" (shown below, right).

Finger Bite

Several odd stories and gaffes have come from the "No Malarkey" tour thus far. The most noteworthy is Biden nibbling his wife's finger on the opening stop of the tour. On November 30th, 2019, CBS reporter Bo Erickson posted a video with the caption "@JoeBiden's "No Malarkey!" Iowa bus tour starts in Council Bluffs with laughs: An excited @DrBiden gestures and almost hits Joe in the head…and then he bit her finger:" (show below). The video garnered over 750 likes and 200 retweets in two days.

That same day, Twitter user @ashleyfeinberg tweeted two zoomed-in still images of the moment captioning them "as you can see, he did not have a lot of time to aim and, what's more, he was going after a moving target--and yet the entire upper third of the finger, directly in the center of the mouth" (shown below, right). The tweet garnered over 640 likes in two days.

Push-up Contest Challenge

At a December 5th stop on his Iowa tour, a voter said to Biden he believed he was too old to run for the Presidency. Biden, irritated, challenged the man to do push-ups with him. The moment was covered by the New York Times.^[2]

Search Interest

External References