Joe Biden Makes It Clear: “I’m Not Sorry for Anything That I Have Ever Done”

Over the last week, Joe Biden has issued a number of statements in response to the women saying his trademark overly familiar manner of touching has made them uncomfortable. Some of those statements were carefully constructed; others seemed more off-the-cuff, thought the wording was still no doubt carefully chosen. One word that didn’t appear in any of those statements was “sorry.” And the reason for that is simple: Because he’s not.

Following a speech to the electrical workers’ union Friday, he spoke to reporters and naturally, the subject came up. When asked if he thinks he “owes these women a direct apology” for how he made them feel, he responded, “The fact of the matter is I made it clear that if I made anyone feel uncomfortable, I feel badly about that. It was never my intention. Ever, ever, ever.”

The reporters pushed the issue and asked directly, “Are you sorry for the way you behaved?” And the answer is no.

“I’m sorry I didn’t understand more,” he said. “I’m not sorry for any of my intentions. I’m not sorry for anything that I have ever done. I have never been disrespectful intentionally to a man or a woman. That’s not the reputation I’ve had since I was in high school, for God’s sakes.”

If any textbooks are in need of the perfect example of an I’m sorry you felt that way non-apology, here it is. No one is questioning his intentions. No one is questioning his high school reputation. He seems desperate to maintain his image and identity as a “good” man, as if he would be disqualified from holding the title of Good Man if he were to fully acknowledge that even with pure intentions, his actions hurt women–which, let’s be clear, is different from women feeling hurt in proximity to his actions.

This is a very different situation, but it is reminiscent of the comments he recently made regarding Anita’s horrible treatment during Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Biden recently said “To this day, I regret I couldn’t give her the kind of hearing she deserved. I wish I could have done something,” apparently forgetting that as Senate Judiciary Chairman at the time, he was in full control of that hearing. Biden’s view of his own life seems to have a disconnect between intention and action, as if because he has good intentions, any negative reaction to his actions has to be due to outside forces.

Biden was asked if this week’s news will change the way he campaigns and he said yes (despite not actually having yet announced his campaign), once again–as he did in his non-apology video–changing the subject to selfies. He says everyone wants a selfie these days but he insists on taking them instead of letting the other person do it because “you have to wonder what everything’s being used for.”

Either that’s a bizarre tangent or those two issues—the women speaking out against his touching and the worry over selfies getting misappropriated—are linked in his mind because he, like so many others, think that these women’s statements are not genuine, but part of a manufactured smear campaign to make something innocent look untoward.

Despite his statements insisting he “gets it” and that he respects the women speaking out, Biden has made it clear he doesn’t actually have much respect for what they’re saying. During that speech Friday, he turned the issue into a joke.

He thought it was such a funny joke, in fact, that he repeated it.

Biden doesn’t get to have it both ways. He doesn’t get to insist that he respects women and then turn their brave decision to speak out into a joke. There will be plenty of people saying that this doesn’t matter because it’s just a joke. But jokes can be used as a way to strategically devalue someone.

There is exactly one way for Biden make it out of this gracefully:

I doubt he would actually do that. Biden has proven that loves respecting women right up until the moment it interferes with what he was already going to do anyway. But we can hope.

(image: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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