Stephen Colbert needled President-elect Joe Biden over his alleged run-in with a Delaware gangster when the late-night host asked for his reaction to critics suggesting his wife Jill should drop her doctoral title.
During a Thursday interview, the CBS comic asked Biden, “as a husband,” whether he wanted “to get out a length of pool chain and go full Corn Pop” on people who agreed with an incendiary Wall Street Journal op-ed that argued his second wife should stop referring to herself as “doctor” when her doctorate was in education and not medicine.
“The answer is, it’s close,” Biden joked. “I’ve been suppressing my Irishness for a long time.”
Biden has repeatedly spoken about an encounter he claims to have had in 1962 with a leader of the dangerous Romans gang outside a pool in Wilmington, Delaware.
The confrontation was reportedly in reaction to Biden, who worked as one of the few white lifeguards at the all-black pool, reprimanding a man called “Corn Pop” for bouncing on the diving board and breaking other ground rules.
Corn Pop came armed to fight with straight razors after Biden’s shift, while the former vice president wrapped a metal chain around his arm. In the end, the two decided not to fight, and they became friends, according to Biden. Corn Pop was identified as a man named William Morris, who is now dead.
On Thursday, Jill Biden described the Wall Street Journal op-ed as “such a surprise.” She said it was “really the tone” in which the writer calls her “kiddo” that shocked her the most. But added she was grateful for her supporters during the backlash.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it,” she told Colbert.
