Joe Biden...Stop

Plenty of people love former Vice President Joe Biden for his folksy speaking style, and tendency to go off-script at key moments, But after his interview with NBC News on Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, perhaps Joe should sit back and shut up for a while.

“Anita Hill was vilified when she came forward by a lot of my colleagues,” Biden told NBC’s Today show. “I wish I could have done more to prevent those questions and the way they asked them.”

Biden infamously led the 1991 Senate Judiciary Committee hearings where Anita Hill testified that now-Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sexually harassed her. He has since admitted that he owed Hill an apology for his handling of the hearings, and told NBC that, were Hill watching, he’d tell her, “I’m sorry I couldn’t have stopped the kind of attacks that came to you,” which, hmmmmm? (Hill said earlier this month, “There are more important things to me now than hearing an apology from Joe Biden. I’m OK with where I am.”)

But Biden really Biden’d things up later in the interview, when he opined on why men don’t understand the trauma many women face coming forward about past sexual assault.

“Did you see the movie Deliverance?” Biden asked. “How about if you were the guy strapped to the tree? Would you want to relive that?”

I dunno, Joe: Using a cartoonishly exaggerated rape scene from a 46-year-old action movie to make a point about the very real emotional toll sexual assault can take on women—and men—isn’t exactly a winning strategy here.

Joe Biden…Stop