Too soon, Ted.
GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz made an ill-timed, ill-received joke about grieving Vice President Biden Wednesday night — just days after Biden’s son, Beau, died of brain cancer.
Less than an hour after bombing with his Biden barb, clumsy comic Cruz apologized for his remarks.
Cruz cracked his joke during a half-hour speech at a Livingston County Republican Party dinner in Howell, Mich., with about 650 fellow Republicans packed into a banquet hall, according to the Detroit News.
“Vice President Joe Biden,” Cruz, a Texas Senator, told the crowd. “You know the nice thing? You don’t need a punch line.” (The joke starts at 17:30 in the audio clip.)
“I promise you it works,” he went on, to laughter and applause. “The next party you’re at, just walk up to someone and say, ‘Vice President Joe Biden’ and just close your mouth. They will crack up laughing.”
The joke comes four days after the death of Beau Biden, 46, an Iraq War veteran and former two-term attorney general of Delaware. He is set to be buried in Delaware on Saturday.
Within an hour of his joke, as social media lit up with outrage, Cruz apologized on his Facebook page.
“It was a mistake to use an old joke about Joe Biden during his time of grief, and I sincerely apologize,” he wrote. “The loss of his son is heartbreaking and tragic, and our prayers are very much with the Vice President and his family.”
Cruz has been repeating the same “old joke” about Biden since at least 2013.
During his speech, Cruz also called to “repeal every word of Obamacare” and criticized his Republican challengers for not standing up for Indiana’s controversial religious freedom law, which many said would legalize discrimination against LGBT customers in businesses around the state.
Detroit News reporter Chad Livengood wrote that when he asked Cruz why he used the Biden joke Wednesday night, the presidential candidate walked away without answering.
Follow @jaysunsilver
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE.
