Useful Notes Cleanup

Tropes associated with Joe Biden in media and portrayals in fiction:

• Big "SHUT UP!": During the first presidential debate of the 2020 election, Donald Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden's attempt to answer a question given to him by moderator Chris Wallace on whether he would support "court-packing."^note This was a proposal introduced by progressive Democrats to add more justices to the Supreme Court; a similar attempt by FDR in 1937 so he could get more favorable rulings on New Deal legislation failed due to public opposition Annoyed by this, Biden ended up snapping at Trump "Will you shut up, man?" This instantly became a meme during that year's election cycle.
• Book Ends: He started his political career as the youngest U.S. Senator in modern^note  read: "age-checked". There have been a few serving in the past who were not actually 30 or even close, but as Joe was still 29 when he won the 1972 Senate race, he's about as young as you can currently get — to compare, the youngest Senator to get anywhere near that, Georgia's Jon Ossoff, wasn’t even elected until 2021 history, and ultimately became the oldest President. To make this even stranger, as noted by some of the news anchors who covered the 2020 presidential election (such as Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC's Morning Joe), he was elected to his first Senate term on November 7, 1972; and the 2020 presidential election was called for him on November 7, 2020.
• Boring, but Practical: In something of an inversion of the old "Diamond Joe" persona The Onion helped him cultivate, during and after the 2020 presidential election, Biden more or less promised to be "reassuringly boring" compared to his predecessor. Pragmatically, this was the subject of some contention from fellow Democrats, with much early criticism thrown on him as being too moderate compared to more progressive candidates like Bernie Sanders, but ultimately, his approach won him the primaries, and eventually the election as a whole. Stephen Colbert and Rachel Maddow satirically extolled in almost quasi-pornographic terms the "baseline competency" of Biden and his incoming Cabinet.
  Stephen Colbert: I've never been more excited by vanilla in my entire life! Two scoops please!
  Rachel Maddow: All of their boring base competency is itself thrilling to an almost Adult Movie degree at this point. 'Look at you! With all your degrees and your experience and your cool-headed approach to mainstream problems! Come over here!'
• Butt-Monkey: The Onion's depiction of "Diamond" Joe Biden saw him portrayed as his, usually having him getting himself into hijinks (due to being portrayed as a mix of a Frat Bro, The Casanova and The Stoner) of which Obama had to bail him out of. This also extended to his real-life verbal gaffes, which made him a lighthearted version of this for the Obama administration.
• Canine Companion: One bipartisan point toward him has been that, unlike Trump breaking an over a century long tradition, Biden's brought pets back into the White House with his two German Shepherds, Champ and Major, and they have been seen accompanying him in the Oval Office and frolicking in the White House lawn.
• Catchphrase:
  • Biden's tendency to refer to anything he disagreed with as "a bunch of malarkey" became so entrenched in popular culture that by the time of the 2012 presidential election there were bets on how soon he would use the phrase against Paul Ryan in the VP debate, and Biden himself seemed to lampshade it when it was used in one of his first responses of the night in his 2016 Democratic Convention speech. One of his slogans on the campaign trail for the 2020 presidential race was "No Malarkey!" which could be seen emblazoned on the side of his campaign bus◊ at one point. There was much delight when he finally said it out loud during the last debate of the 2020 presidential election.
  • An exasperated "C'mon, man!" similarly became a catchphrase of his during the 2020 campaign.
  • He starts a lot of his tweets with "Let me be clear."
  • Biden came to define the 2020 presidential election several times as a "battle for the soul of the nation." It went to the point that a 2021 book about the Democratic primary campaigns was titled Battle for the Soul.
  • Biden almost always concludes his speeches with "May God bless our country, and may God protect our troops."
• Cool Car: Biden is a known car enthusiast (his father managed a dealership), and several of his appearances in media have him accompained by a nice ride.
  • Biden owns a 1967 Chevrolet Corvette convertible that he has had since it was brand new (it was given to him as a gift for his first wedding). Biden and his Corvette appeared on an episode of Jay Leno's Garage where he did burnouts in it and later drag raced a newer Corvette driven by a mysterious driver, later revealed to be none other than Colin Powell. Biden's Corvette appeared again during his run for president, such as in a video he released about his "vetting process" during the period of speculation about his vice-presidential pick.
  • The Onion portrayed him as driving a 1978 Trans Am, which he would wash shirtless in the White House driveway. The Obama Biden Mysteries, a series of novels that portray Obama and Biden as solving crimes like a modern day Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson after they leave the White House, actually features Biden driving a Trans Am in one of its covers, possibly as a direct Shout-Out to his The Onion portrayal.
  • A sketch recorded for the 2014 White House Correspondents' Dinner had Biden interact with Selina Meyer of Veep, and he picks her up for a ride through Washington, D.C. in a brand-new yellow Corvette Stingray (perhaps as a reference to his real-life vintage one), although Selina doesn't seem impressed by it. Stills from the video have found their way onto memes and jokes, such as in Jimmy Kimmel Live! when Jimmy Kimmel joked, while showing a picture of Biden in the yellow Corvette◊, that it made him worthy of being called "the real Joe Exotic."
  • Apparently, even becoming president didn't deter him on cars. Weeks into his presidency, he visited a Ford plant in Detroit to extol his administration's plan for electric cars — and he promptly decided to try out the F-150 Lightning, Ford's fully-electric pickup truck, by driving it himself (obviously accompanied by the Secret Service) and tearing down the track to show off how fast it accelerates. Many jokes soon emerged comparing it to the time his predecessor hopped into a truck cab but only limited himself to blow its horn.
• Cool Old Guy: Biden's portrayal through his vice presidency had him as a relatable elder. His 2020 presidential campaign certainly leaned on this, even if by then it appeared to be less receptive, as he was subject to a closer scrutiny of his record due to the fact he was, well, running for U.S. president, that he wasn't the only candidate with a reputation as a cool old guy in the race, and that many thought him to be too moderate for the divisive Age of Trump. Endgame? Biden won the 2020 presidential election with more than 81 million votes, more than any other candidate in U.S. history. And people started noticing Biden's physical similarity to a certain Avenger, including the actor who plays him.
• Cool Shades: There are quite a few jokes that have been made about his Ray Ban Aviators, which are bordering on becoming his trademark, to the point some signs during his 2020 campaign simply had a picture of a pair of sunglasses on them. There's at least one instance of a rally he was in erupting into cheers just because he put them on, and John Oliver on Last Week Tonight once joked that Biden's "happy place" is an image of Biden with his sunglasses on eating ice cream while holding a wad of cash (because there is an actual picture that shows Biden doing all those), and Stephen Colbert has taken to swapping his glasses for a pair of aviator sunglasses whenever he does a Joe Biden joke or impression during his monologue.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Turning him into this (with Obama as the Straight Man) is a very popular meme. He alternately embraces and chafes at the perception of him, because on one hand it helped him connect with voters (and it did balance out President Obama's reserved nature), but on the other, he has pointed out that he is serious about policy and not just lazing his way through life on his charm. His acceptance of said reputation in particular led to comparisons between his demeanor to President Trump's.
• Deadpan Snarker:
  • During the 2020 election against Trump, Biden would make several snide jabs, particularly noticeable in that the Trump campaign tried to portray him as not being the sharpest knife in the drawer due to his age. His most memorable was at the second debate, when he sarcastically referred to Trump as Abraham Lincoln (as Trump had previously said he'd done more for African-Americans than any president except maybe Lincoln). Equally memorable was Trump's response. As Trump was prone to calling him childish nicknames such as "Sleepy Joe" or "Slow Joe", Biden eventually retorted and called him "President Tweety" for his incessant usage of Twitter over prioritizing COVID-19 financial relief to small businesses. Biden supporters quickly jumped at the nickname, creating Tweety Bird memes out of it.
  • Comes up when he isn't dealing with Trump, too. During a press briefing a week into his presidency, a Fox News reporter asked him what he had talked to Vladimir Putin about earlier that day (apparently missing that the White House posted the call transcript online). Biden's response was, "You. He sends his best."
  • Even before the 2020 election, Biden was noted for his quips about his opponents. One of his standout moments from the 2008 Democratic primaries was his quote about New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani (who at the time was competing in the Republican primaries), which came to be viewed as summarizing how Giuliani milked/squandered the good will he had earned for his handling of 9/11: "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11." Even Cody Johnston from Some More News noted that it was a very apt description. (Keep in mind that Cody is not a fan of Biden, at all, and his approval was less because of it being a good zinger and more because how Giuliani had really fallen from grace, especially following a series of embarrassing incidents during and immediately after the 2020 presidential election.)
• A Father to His Men: While how he did so was harshly criticized across the aisle, Biden fiercely defended his withdrawal of the troops from Afghanistan, stating that he will not send any more "generations of America's daughters and sons" to fight the war. This was keeping with a promise that he had made over a decade prior when his son Beau was deployed to active service that he would not see his grandchildren go to fight in the same war.^note In Biden's defense, it was Trump who got the ball rolling for the withdrawal with not enough time for the Biden administration to prepare (Trump also freed 5,000 Taliban, including one of their key leaders) and the U.S. military had trained the (now exiled) Afghan government's military to continue keeping the Taliban at bay once the U.S. military left, only for the Afghan government's military to end up folding almost without a fight.
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: After Champ sadly passed away at the age of thirteen and Major, a rescue, was sent to stay with family friends due to finding the White House too stressful, the Bidens have two pets actually still resident at the White House — German Shepherd puppy Commander, adopted in December 2021, and tabby cat Willow, who joined the family in January 2022.
• Handicapped Badass: Stuttering. Despite the fact that Joe Biden has been in U.S. politics for about 50 years and despite him having spoken of his childhood battles with stuttering during his tenure as VP, his more famous Open Mouth, Insert Foot incidents seem to have overshadowed this issue until the 2020 presidential election. Despite Trump's own tendency to say widely derided nonsensical things, his campaign tried to portray Biden as "senile" and "in cognitive decline", particularly honing in on Biden's less than fluent speech patterns. In what one journalist called "a political judo move that may be studied for decades to come", the Biden campaign chose to fully embrace the stuttering issue: e.g. Joe Biden said at a Town Hall on CNN: “Stuttering, when you think about it, is the only handicap people still laugh about, that they still humiliate people about and they don’t even mean to” and spoke openly about his longstanding advocacy and work mentoring young people with stuttering problems. Probably the most effective breakthrough for this message was a testimonial at the DNC from a young supporter whom Biden had coached about coping with his own stutter. Not only did stuttering advocacy groups (from around the world) jump in to support and/or defend Biden, some also noted that by portraying Biden as mentally incompetent, the Trump campaign had set Biden up to have a Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass moment. Some even called Biden's stutter his "superpower" because it had given him lifelong training in how to face down a bully, and given how Trump's "tough talk" rhetoric had led to his detractors to compare it to that of a bully (not helping is the fact he'd mocked a disabled reporter before, to frequent criticism).
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Portraying him and President Obama as this was a very popular meme during their time in office together, and in a post-presidency interview Obama gave, he commented that the memes were "basically true."
• Insult Backfire: Perhaps due to his unassuming nature, propaganda and claims that get levied against him often end up making him look better to people. For example, when a Trump staffer compared watching his town hall (on the night that the second presidential debate was supposed to have taken place) to an episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Biden supporters latched onto the comparison in a heartbeat because Fred Rogers is almost universally beloved. And then there's this Chinese propaganda, which would make for a great Death Metal album cover.
• Intergenerational Friendship:
  • His famous, much-meme'd friendship with Barack Obama, who is 19 years younger than he is.
  • With Kamala Harris, who is 22 years younger than he is.
• The Load: A common joke used in satirical portrayals during Biden's tenure as vice president was to portray him as one to president Obama. He was noted as being an odd inverse Strawman Has a Point, where many of his comments meant in praise of Obama would, if anyone else were saying it, be savage criticism (such as suggesting that if Obama was elected, a crisis would appear... to test him, and that was after he was selected as VP). In reality, Biden had gone against Obama on policy in ways that would retroactively be deemed correct, only to be dismissed.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Portrayed this way by The Onion as "Diamond" Joe Biden. Among other things, Diamond Joe owns a 1978 Trans Am that he washes shirtless in the driveway of the White House every day.
  • He received the highest popular vote of any U.S. President to date, despite the country being ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic at the time and the U.S. postal service having been severely defunded, and became the first candidate to defeat an incumbent president since Bill Clinton, almost 30 years before. In particular, the fact that he delivering unexpected (if very narrow) victories in long-solid Republican states Arizona and Georgia resulted in meme-videos such as pictures of a smiling Biden superimposed with landscapes of Georgia with "Marching Through Georgia" in the background.
• Memetic Troll: Portrayed as this by social media in the last weeks of his tenure as vice president, which portrayed him as killing time before the change of administration by preparing pranks for the members of the incoming Donald Trump administration. Here are some examples. He is aware of the memes, has approved of them and thinks they're funny, saying that his favorite one was suggesting Obama leave a fake birth certificate in the Oval Office desk.
• Older Sidekick: It was noted during Obama and Biden's tenure as president and vice president respectively that Biden was almost two decades older than Obama, with Obama being viewed as more straight-laced while Biden was something of a Plucky Comic Relief, a welcome change from his, to be diplomatic, more distant and less-congenial predecessor as VP Dick Cheney. During this time Biden was also portrayed as a bit of a (vice) President Buffoon thanks to his many verbal gaffes.
• Precision F-Strike: Upon the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Biden could be heard saying "This is a big fucking deal!" to Barack Obama after a nearby microphone picked it up. Biden sort-of leaned into the phrase in a Bowdlerised way, as his 2020 campaign website said that any donations made by people were "a big freakin' deal".
• Rail Enthusiast: He's a famous rail-travel advocate and comedic portrayals of him parody this into a childish enthusiasm for "the choo-choos". This is because, as a senator, he never had a house in Washington, D.C. Instead, he chose to take a four-hour daily commute via Amtrak from his home in Wilmington, Delaware so he could see his sons in the mornings and evenings. On a policy level, he has always been a major booster for Amtrak—earning the nickname "Amtrak Joe"—and never met a passenger rail improvement project he didn't like. Amtrak would often hold the last train to Wilmington so Biden could make it home and eventually renamed the Wilmington train station the "Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Rail Station" in honor of his political support and loyal ridership. By the time he was elected to the presidency in 2020, he was totally leaning into this trope - and in an official government capacity too! His bio as President on the official White House website is subtitled "From Scranton to Wilmington to the White House — with thousands of train rides in between."
• Salt and Pepper:
  • Obama and Biden. During their tenure, Obama, the first African-American president, was often viewed as the straight-laced one of the two, with a dry sense of humor (most of the time) and was always calm and very measured with the press outside of the occasional wry remark, whereas Biden, a white man, was goofier and would oftentimes ramble and say silly things on live television.
  • He would replicate this relationship with Kamala Harris, with the roles inverted. For whatever reason,^note Be it the tragic death of his son towards the end of his tenure as VP, or just the fact that 12 years had passed between Biden being first inaugurated as vice president and as president, and by the time the latter took place he was pushing 80. "Diamond Joe" gave way to a more reserved Biden by the time he became president. Harris, his vice president, on the other hand, was the first African-American (and first South Asian/Indian) vice president, and was noted for, despite cultivating an image of an Iron Lady in the Senate, not having the trademark appearance of one (wearing her hair relaxed and long instead of sporting Power Hair, for example), being otherwise vivacious and even having her own distinctive Signature Laugh (which even her detractors took notice, but which they portray as an Annoying Laugh).
• "Sesame Street" Cred: Once he appeared in a 1993 episode of of Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego.
• Speech Impediment: He's been living with a stutter for his whole life, but worked through it. He said his mother would tell him, "'Joey, don't let this define you. Joey, remember who you are. Joey, you can do it.' So every time I would walk out, she would reinforce me. I know that sounds silly, but it really matters." During the 2020 Democratic National Convention, there was a short segment focusing on then-13-year-old Brayden Harrington, whom Biden had personally assisted by telling Harrington ways that helped Biden get his own stuttering under control.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Ice cream. Portrayals of Biden have taken his love of ice cream, especially vanilla soft-serve ice cream cones, and ran with it, taking any opportunity to shoehorn in a cone. For his part, Biden has leaned into it, even posting a picture of a pint of ice cream as part of his prep routine ahead of the first general election debate in 2020 (cleverly using a pint of ice cream from a producer based in Ohio, the state where that debate was held), and took a short detour from his campaigning the following month to gush about Dairy Queen's Blizzards for National Dessert Day. His Twitter profile also includes "Loves ice cream" in his description.
• Verbal Tic: Aside from the stutter that Biden had been struggling with since childhood and has often been the source of his misspeaking, he also regularly uses several turns of phrase to keep his words on track.
  • "The fact of the matter is ..."
  • "... first of all, second of all..." when transitioning between two topics.
• Violently Protective Girlfriend: Well, more like Violently Protective Wife, but Biden's wife, Dr. Jill Biden, gained media attention at the 2020 Super Tuesday primaries when, during her husband's victory speech after he won the majority of the states in play, she physically blocked a protester who got onstage from getting at him by giving the protester a stiff-arm.◊ The jokes about it on late night were endless, such as in The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and The Daily Show with Trevor Noah.
  Stephen Colbert: I don't know if Joe can win the presidency, but Jill is definitely going to win SummerSlam!
  [shows a photoshopped picture of Jill Biden shoulder-tackling Roman Reigns]
  Trevor Noah: That Jill Biden — see that? — stepped in and blocked that protester like a white lady Jackie Chan. Bam! […] Hell, Biden has more women protecting him than T'Challa. No wonder he's winning the black vote.
• We Used to Be Friends: Despite being on opposite sides of the aisle, Biden and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) were once close friends. Graham even praised him, while choking up, as "as good a man God ever created" in this interview in 2015. However, their friendship deteriorated as Graham began cozying up to then-President Trump, publicly insulted Biden's son Hunter as Hunter became the target of Republican attack ads during the 2020 election, and became a key defender of Trump during his Ukraine scandal and impeachment. Graham called him shortly after the election to patch up, stating that he only attacked Hunter to satisfy Trump and his supporters, but Biden told him off. The breakdown in their friendship was particularly highlighted in the media, as Biden had pledged during the 2020 election to be open to work alongside opposing politicians (which received mixed reactions), yet Graham's actions were too much to bear. When asked about their friendship by Stephen Colbert, Biden solemnly said that Graham was "a personal disappointment."