(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) In a bizarre remark that some audience members interpreted as a joke, President Joe Biden, the former Delaware Senator for 36 years, claimed on May 2 that “there’s never been” a Senator from Delaware.
“Now there have not been very many Senators from Delaware. It’s a small state,” Biden said. “Matter of fact, there’s never been one, so I want to take advantage of making sure I introduce her.”
Biden made the comment at a White House gathering for the Islamic holiday, Eid al-Fitr, as he introduced Delaware Rep. Madinah Wilson-Anton, the first Muslim in the General Assembly, reported the Western Journal.
“She represents the state of Delaware, by the way,” he said. “And I want you to know, she works at the University of Delaware at the Biden Institute. So we call that using a point of personal privilege.”
Some have interpreted the weird statement as an attempted joke about Delaware’s Senators because several audience members laughed, though they may have laughed in disbelief at his absurdity.
Biden may have lost several words when he tried to translate his thoughts into speech.
Perhaps he meant to say that there have not been very many Muslim senators from Delaware. But this interpretation would imply that Biden did not know Wilson-Anton’s office and that he was referring to the state’s General Assembly, not the US Senate.
Most people refer to the members of the US Senate as Senators and to members of the states’ senates as state senators. Plus, Wilson-Anton was elected to the Delaware House of Representatives, not the Delaware Senate, in 2020.
There has not been a Muslim Senator from Delaware, so this interpretation would make the most sense.
There have, however, been many Senators from Delaware—58 white men in fact—and the first two were elected in 1788 after the Constitution’s ratification.
