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Biden’s “lying dog-faced pony soldier” moment, explained [VOX spinning]
Vox ^ | Feb 10, 2020, 1:20pm EST | By Anna North

Posted on 02/10/2020 12:46:08 PM PST by Red Badger

It wasn’t the first time he’s had an odd answer to a woman’s question.

A young female voter asked Joe Biden on Sunday why voters should believe he can win.

His response was rather unusual.

“You’re arguably the candidate with the greatest advantage in this race,” Madison Moore, a college student, said to Biden at a New Hampshire campaign event. “How do you explain the performance in Iowa, and why should the voters believe that you can win the national election?”

“Iowa’s a Democratic caucus,” the former vice president responded. “You ever been to a caucus?”

When Moore said she had, he responded, “No you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier.”

The phrase immediately got attention, with many confused by Biden’s choice of words. As it turns out, “lying dog-faced pony soldier” is a phrase Biden has used before. He attributes it to John Wayne, though its actual provenance is somewhat unclear.

But for Moore, the problem wasn’t so much Biden’s word choice as the fact that he responded to her question by demanding whether she’d ever been to a caucus.

“Joe Biden has been performing incredibly poorly in this race,” Moore told the Washington Post. “His inability to answer a simple question from a nobody college student like me only exacerbates that reality.”

Biden has been criticized in the past for responding to questions — especially questions posed by women — in ways that seem condescending, as when he called moderator Lyz Lenz a “lovely person” after her question at a September LGBTQ rights forum. And the moment in New Hampshire was another reminder that while Biden’s responses may seem folksy or homespun to some, to others they’re a sign that he’s not always treating voters with the seriousness they deserve.

Biden has used “lying dog-faced pony soldier” before

Biden explained the provenance of “lying dog-faced pony soldier” at a North Dakota rally in 2018, saying that his brother loved to use lines from movies.

“There’s a line in a movie, a John Wayne movie, where the Indian chief turns to John Wayne and says, this is a lying dog-faced pony soldier,” Biden said.

It’s not clear if this line actually shows up in any John Wayne movie — as Matthew Dessem points out at Slate, there are 180 to sift through. The general consensus seems to be that Biden is probably thinking of the 1952 Tyrone Power film Pony Soldier, in which a character says, “The pony soldier speaks with a tongue of the snake that rattles.”

Whatever the case, Biden has used the line in the past when responding to questions. At an Iowa event in December, a young voter said that President Obama promised his father that he could keep his existing health plan after the passage of the Affordable Care Act — but, in fact, his dad wasn’t able to do so.

“Were you lying to my dad?” the voter asked.

“A lying dog-faced pony soldier. No,” Biden said, before acknowledging that some people were forced to change plans under the ACA.

When he used the phrase on Sunday, it felt like a bit of a left turn from Moore’s question. She had asked why voters should believe he could win, following his fourth-place finish in Iowa. His response was, apparently, to start explaining caucuses to her, assuming she’d never been to one.

As it happens, he was right — Moore later said in a statement to the Washington Post that she had never been to a caucus.

“I asked Joe Biden a fair question,” she wrote. “His immediate response was to question whether I had ever attended a caucus. In my nervousness in the presence of the former Vice President, I nodded yes.”

Whether she’d personally been to a caucus or not, she told the Post, was irrelevant to her question. It’s part of a pattern in his interactions with voters

The “lying dog-faced pony soldier” phrase itself was a joke, according to Biden campaign traveling national press secretary Remi Yamamoto.

But it wasn’t the first time Biden has faced scrutiny for his responses to questions.

In June, activist K.C. Cayo asked Biden about his stance on the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding for most abortions (though he supported Hyde in the past, Biden now says he backs repeal of the amendment). Cayo, who uses they/them pronouns, and the two women activists with them, also asked Biden to protect sexual assault survivors. Advertisement

In response, Cayo wrote at Vice, Biden “leaned in very close to my face, and started wagging his finger at me,” saying, “Nobody has spoken about it, done more, or changed more than I have.”

“I wasn’t able to even finish my 30-second elevator pitch — I never got past the first sentence,” Cayo told Vice. “Just the fact that he wagged his finger at me in such a condescending manner is very telling.”

Then, at a forum on LGBTQ issues in September, moderator Lyz Lenz brought up Biden’s votes in favor of “don’t ask, don’t tell” and the Defense of Marriage Act. “You did vote to repeal both of those, but you have also praised Vice President Mike Pence as a ‘decent guy,’” Lenz noted.

“You’re a lovely person,” the former vice president responded.

.......MORE SPINNING AT LINK..................


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections; US: Iowa; US: New Hampshire
KEYWORDS: 2020election; annanorth; caucuses; dnctalkingpoint; dnctalkingpoints; dogfacedponysoldier; election2020; hampton; iowa; madisonmoore; mediawingofthednc; merceruniversity; newhampshire; nonplayercharacter; nonplayercharacters; npc; npcs; partisanmediashills; presstitutes; smearmachine
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1 posted on 02/10/2020 12:46:08 PM PST by Red Badger
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To: Red Badger
Yeah, what you heard? You didn't hear it. And if you think you heard it, you're stupid, OK?
2 posted on 02/10/2020 12:48:29 PM PST by Steely Tom ([Seth Rich] == [the Democrats' John Dean])
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To: Red Badger

Vox is trying to put some lipstick on a pig....


3 posted on 02/10/2020 12:50:17 PM PST by cgbg (The Democratic Party is morphing into the Donner Party)
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To: Steely Tom

They can’t even discover what movie it came from, but it didn’t come from a John Wayne movie...................


4 posted on 02/10/2020 12:50:59 PM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.......... ..)
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To: Red Badger

Granny Joe is a thieving, hair plugged, organ grinder monkey.


5 posted on 02/10/2020 12:51:05 PM PST by blueunicorn6 ("A crack shot and a good dancer")
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To: Steely Tom

Quid Pro is figuring to have picked up the misogynist Rats’ vote today.


6 posted on 02/10/2020 12:51:44 PM PST by treetopsandroofs
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To: Red Badger

That’s why Obama said to Joe a few months ago: “you don’t have to do this, Joe.”


7 posted on 02/10/2020 12:51:47 PM PST by PGR88
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To: cgbg

They are gaslighting the public............

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

............


8 posted on 02/10/2020 12:52:32 PM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.......... ..)
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To: Red Badger

Joe, part of being a performer, which is what a campaigning politician is, is gauging your audience. Clearly, you did not do that here. Explaining the joke sfterward to someone you insulted is not positively assessing and interacting with your polity.


9 posted on 02/10/2020 12:53:09 PM PST by Pearls Before Swine
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To: Red Badger

Childish, immature name calling. Not at all presidential or gentlemanly. Sounds like something a child would say.


10 posted on 02/10/2020 12:53:29 PM PST by all the best (You)
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To: Red Badger

My wife (who is 1/2 Apache Indian) says ‘pony soldier’ was originally a derogatory term applied to Indians employed by the US government to track other Indians.


11 posted on 02/10/2020 12:53:35 PM PST by ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton (Go Egypt on 0bama)
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To: cgbg

This, as apparently Biden is misquoting. LOL huge surprise.

https://meaww.com/joe-biden-new-hamshphire-woman-lying-dog-faced-pony-soldier-asks-him-iowa-results-quote-john-wayne


12 posted on 02/10/2020 12:53:43 PM PST by BlueHorseShoe
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To: Red Badger

If President Trump had said it the commie media coverage would have been non stop calling Trump a sexist, and they would say DOG WHISTLE DOG WHISTLE..obviously since there were some blacks in the room he was referring to blacks as dogs


13 posted on 02/10/2020 12:54:09 PM PST by Sarah Barracuda
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; Bockscar; cardinal4; ColdOne; ...

14 posted on 02/10/2020 12:54:10 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager imagining managing an imaginary menagerie.)
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To: Red Badger

Biden’s a film-flammin’ addle-pated nincompoopiechute.


15 posted on 02/10/2020 12:54:49 PM PST by RegulatorCountry
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To: Red Badger

The King of Corruption tells one of the Little People to STFU.


16 posted on 02/10/2020 12:54:53 PM PST by samtheman (Trump TV Ad: Virginia takes guns. NY legalizes crime. Iowa steals votes. What Democrats do.)
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To: Red Badger

Actually his brother often quoted Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maquire telling Slow Joe”Show me the Money”!!!!!


17 posted on 02/10/2020 12:55:30 PM PST by lakeman (Semper Fi)
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To: ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton

That appears to be the correct context as well, because Quid Pro Joe was trying to claim the women was not a “proper” faithful Democrat.


18 posted on 02/10/2020 12:55:30 PM PST by cgbg (The Democratic Party is morphing into the Donner Party)
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To: ChinaGotTheGoodsOnClinton

I watch a lot of westerns and have never heard that complete phrase in a movie. I have heard dog-faced, and pony soldier, but never both together..............


19 posted on 02/10/2020 12:55:37 PM PST by Red Badger (Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain.......... ..)
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To: Red Badger
“His immediate response was to question whether I had ever attended a caucus. In my nervousness in the presence of the former Vice President, I nodded yes.”

Well, to be fair to Biden, he called her a liar...and she later admitted she waa.

20 posted on 02/10/2020 12:56:48 PM PST by Cowboy Bob (Mocking Liberals is not only a right, but the responsibility of Americans.)
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