Biden Recalls Time He Put a Dead Dog on Republican's Doorstep

President Biden's critics are having a field day with a weird anecdote he shared at the National Association of Counties 2022 Legislative Conference earlier this week. The president, looking back to his days as a county councilman in Delaware in the early 1970s, told the Washington conference Tuesday that he had once left a dead dog on the doorstep of a Republican woman, the Guardian reports. He said the district was mostly middle class to working class, but he got a call one night from "a very wealthy neighborhood." He said a woman "obviously not of the same persuasion as I was, politically" complained there was a dead dog on her lawn.

"I said, 'Have you called county?' She said, 'Yes, they're not here.' And I said, 'Well, I'll get them in the morning.' She said, 'I want it removed now. I pay your salary," Biden said to laughter, according to the White House transcript. "So, I went over," he continued. "I picked it up. She said, 'I want it out of my front yard.' I put it on her doorstep." He added, "But I've gotten much better since then." Biden was elected to the New Castle County Council in 1970 and then to the US Senate in 1972, when he was 29. "I ran for the Senate because it was too damn hard being in the council," he joked at the start of his remarks to the conference. He went on to discuss his administration's initiatives, including the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Conservatives on Twitter mocked Biden for the dog anecdote, with an account run by the Republican National Committee asking, "What is he talking about?" reports Fox. Duane Patterson, producer of the Hugh Hewitt Show, said Biden appears to have told different versions of the story. Patterson pointed to a January 2021 post on the National Association of Counties website that said: "Current New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer recalled a story during the December NACo Board of Directors meeting that Biden had told him about his time as council member when a constituent insisted a dead animal immediately be removed from her street. Biden arrived in a pickup truck and removed the animal himself that night." (More President Biden stories.)