In what has become an alarmingly common phenomenon over the last couple of years, President Joe Biden on Saturday was captured on camera in what can only be described as a truly bizarre posture in relation to a pair of young girls he encountered while on a family holiday in Massachusetts, as the New York Post reports.
Biden was on a stroll in Nantucket to make a point of supporting small businesses in the well-known tourist haven when he found himself in the vicinity of the Lemon Press Juice Shop.
As an Instagram post from the Nantucket Current reveals, the president's appearance near the establishment elicited squeals of excitement from two school-aged girls, which caught Biden's attention and prompted him to walk toward the window from which they were watching him.
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While Biden's decision to go and greet his enthusiastic admirers was not necessarily problematic in and of itself, the actual image that the move produced left the commander-in-chief open to a fair bit of mockery online.
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 26, 2022
Many of the negative responses to the photo included references to Biden's infamous pattern of awkward and sometimes questionable interactions with young females, including his apparent penchant for sniffing their hair.
One Twitter user observed, according to the Daily Mail, "Thankfully there was glass to protect them from getting sniffed."
Another, citing Biden's prior instances of unusual conduct, wrote, "Things in life that never change. Death, taxes and Biden with little girls."
Expressing serious concern over the president's antics, an offended Instagram user responded to the Current's post by saying, "This is not normal. Stop trying to normalize this. If this was any other old man, you would all be freaking out, too."
Standing alone, Biden's Nantucket antics would be unlikely to raise any serious eyebrows, but given the catalog of odd anecdotes with young ladies that he has accumulated – including a cringeworthy October incident in which he grabbed hold of a teen girl's shoulders and told her, "no serious guys 'til you're 30," Saturday's photo was an attention grabber, indeed.
Another of Biden's most recent head-scratchers concerning women and girls came in September when, during a speech to a group of educators, he indicated that he spotted an audience member he recognized, cryptically declaring, "We go back a log way. She was 12, I was 30."
Even before he was elected to the presidency, Biden was called to account for his controversial history of questionable commentary and unwanted physical touching. He attempted to defuse the issue by saying, "I shake hands, I hug people. I grab men and women by the shoulders and say you can do this, whether they're women, men, young old. It's the way I've always been and tried to show that I care about them and I'm listening," the Daily Mail further noted.
Though at the time, Biden pledged to be more aware of the manner in which his gestures might be interpreted so as to avoid making anyone feel uncomfortable, it does not appear he has held to his word, something which comes as no surprise to anyone who has paid even the slightest attention since the day he assumed office.
