This is the embarrassing moment Joe Biden listed four potential female vice presidents – but appeared to struggle to remember any of their names.
The former VP was speaking a campaign stop in Winterset, Iowa, on Friday evening when he was asked by a voter who he would pick as his deputy, should he win the race to the White House.
Democrat Biden said he ‘could start naming people but the press will think that’s who I picked’ before not being able to actually recall the names of any of those he might select.
Instead, the 77-year-old listed their qualifications and identified them via their public roles.
Joe Biden listed four potential female vice presidents – but appeared to struggle to remember any of their names at a campaign stop in Winterset, Iowa, on Friday evening
Biden had initially joked to the voter behind the question: ‘You. Are you available?’
The front runner in the Democratic presidential candidacy then began with ‘the former assistant attorney general who got fired who was just in Delaware’.
He was referring to Sally Yates, a career federal prosecutor who rose to acting attorney general before Trump fired her in 2017 less than two weeks into his presidency.
She had taken the extraordinarily rare step of defying the White House and refused to defend new travel restrictions targeting seven Muslim-majority nations.
In the awkward clip Biden then went on to suggest ‘the woman who should have been the governor of Georgia’, an apparent reference to Stacey Abrams.
Abrams was forced to backtrack after telling The View roundtable on March 27: ‘I think you don’t run for second place.’
In May she said that she would now be open to running on the eventual Democratic nominee’s ticket as vice president.
Biden finished up with ‘the two senators from the state of New Hampshire’, this time referring to Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.
He added: ‘I mean, there’s an enormous number of qualified people.’
In the awkward clip Biden then went on to suggest ‘the woman who should have been the governor of Georgia’, an apparent reference to Stacey Abrams, pictured
Biden finished up with ‘the two senators from the state of New Hampshire’, this time referring to Democrats Jeanne Shaheen, left, and Maggie Hassan, right
Biden began with ‘the former assistant attorney general who got fired who was just in Delaware’. He was referring to Sally Yates, pictured, a career federal prosecutor who rose to acting attorney general before Trump fired her in 2017 less than two weeks into his presidency.
In endorsing Democrat Joe Biden for president on Saturday, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack said, above all, the former vice president’s personal losses give him ‘the capacity to comfort’ and ‘the need to heal’ a divided nation.
Vilsack, who served eight years in the Obama administration with Biden as secretary of agriculture, said during a morning rally in Des Moines that Biden could step into the office with an immediate command of domestic and global issues at a time when events demand ‘you can’t be a rookie in this business. You’ve got to be a pro.’
More fundamentally, the death of Biden´s first wife and infant daughter in a car accident in 1972 and his son Beau´s death from cancer in 2015 have given Biden a deep sense of suffering important to understanding the day-to-day struggles, and personal pain, of many Americans.
He is ‘a man with empathy, and a man who has the heart of a president,’ said Vilsack, who noted Biden´s outreach after Vilsack´s six-year old granddaughter died in 2017 from complications of influenza.
The endorsement comes as Biden has slipped from being the early favorite in Iowa last spring to trailing newcomers, South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Biden said ‘there’s an enormous number of qualified people’ but failed to name four women
Biden is embarking on an eight-day bus tour next week, in hopes of sparking momentum with fewer than two months until the caucuses.
Vilsack was cheered by the more than 300 who attended the morning rally at an event hall in Des Moines. It’s been 18 years since he won reelection, and he remains the only Democrat reelected Iowa governor in more than 50 years.
The centrist Midwesterner, who shares Pennsylvania roots with Biden, was twice on Democrats’ short list for presidential running mate, in 2004 and 2016.