‘Joe 30330’: Biden flubs closing statement – POLITICO

Joe Biden weathered roughly three hours of political attacks from an array of fellow presidential candidates, only to end his debate performance Wednesday night with another viral gaffe.

“Four more years of Donald Trump will go down as an aberration. Hard to overcome the damage he’s done, but we can overcome it. Eight more years of Donald Trump will change America in a fundamental way,” the former vice president warned in his closing statement, miscalculating the amount of time the incumbent commander in chief is constitutionally allowed to occupy the Oval Office.

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Then, staring into the camera, Biden haltingly concluded his pitch to Democratic primary voters: “If you agree with me, go to ‘Joe 30330’ and help me in this fight. Thank you very much.”

The directive immediately provoked confusion online among viewers of the CNN broadcast. Other candidates had pointed viewers to their campaign websites, but the Biden digits did not lead to such a site.

His campaign confirmed in a tweet that he’d actually meant for viewers to text his name to that number. But the damage was done.

An apparent supporter of White House contender Pete Buttigieg quickly snagged the website domain “joe30330.com,” which redirected to a registration page encouraging visitors to “Join Team Pete.”

Within a matter of minutes, the site updated again to advertise a new 2020 aspirant: a person named Josh Fayer. “As the first Gen Z’er to declare candidacy for this office, you can trust that I’m the real deal. And I’m not joshin’ you,” Fayer wrote, promoting an announcement video that had published on YouTube in April.

The social media mockery at Biden’s expense was swift and ruthless. Some Twitter users speculated the 76-year-old candidate was a robot positioning himself for another presidential run in the next millennium, and others equated the ex-veep to a “grandpa figuring out text messages.”

“This is gonna get memed pretty hard,” predicted one astute observer. And so it did.