Rick — thank you for sharing your talent with me. I was so blown away by your art that I asked my team to add it to our online store: https://t.co/dVYZJVceoq pic.twitter.com/lh3keVBoSB
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 24, 2020
I know it seems like I’m desperate, right, like all I want in this job now is a MAMMAL and I’m flexible, like if we can rig up some lights for the iguana maybe that could work, but Joey B. Shark represents the forlorn recollection of a time when we had a president who didn’t treat people like shit:
Yet, far more telling is Joe Biden’s history of support for transgender and non-binary people, something that has surprised even the occasional seasoned political reporter when I’ve briefed them. A week before the election in 2012, Biden told the mother of a transgender child that discrimination against trans people is “the civil rights issue of our time,” in that moment the most assertive public statement of support by any national leader specifically addressing trans rights.
In 2017, he endorsed Danica Roem, the first openly trans person to be elected to a state legislature in U.S. history. Del. Roem — who has won rave reviews for her laser-like focus on constituent concerns like transportation — received a phone call from Biden the night she won and made history, captured in a photo that went viral. Two years prior, Roem had met Biden after the death of his son Beau Biden, and she wrote movingly of his empathy in that moment.
Sarah McBride, the first openly-trans person to speak at a national convention and currently in a bid to become the first openly-trans state senator in the United States, has spoken numerous times of the Biden family’s insistent public support for trans rights, specifically the vice president, who wrote the foreword to her memoir released in 2018.
It would be so nice to have someone in office who doesn’t kick kindergarteners. It really would.
A.