He just can’t help himself. You can see the male staffer in the checked shirt having a quiet fit, because he knows it’s not a good idea. And she should have told him to step back.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Joe Biden left an Iowa teacher unimpressed with his canned response to her question about collective bargaining, but what she resented more was how he abruptly seized her hands and clung onto them.
Roman, 41, had stopped Biden, 76, as he greeted voters on Monday during the Hawkeye Area Labor Council’s Labor Day picnic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The North Liberty preschool teacher, who works with special needs children, was pressing the former vice president on his plans to help unionized members of her profession under recent changes to Iowa’s collective bargaining laws when he reached for her hands.
“I think that he means well but, you know, he grabbed my hands right away and that was really uncomfortable,” she told the Washington Examiner. “He was very close and, in my mind, I’m like, this is part of our problem: Not recognizing that you need to ask first, or can I shake your hand? Not just grab your hands and hang onto them. That bothers me.”