Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D), a 2020 presidential candidate, said Sunday that the allegation that former Vice President Joe Biden kissed a former state lawmaker’s head without her consent in 2014 is “very disconcerting.”
“Certainly, I think it’s very disconcerting and I think that women have to be heard and we should start by believing them,” Hickenlooper said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.”
“I think the more important issue to recognize is that were at an inflection point, really a moment of transformation of the entire country where women, in many cases for the first time, are having the courage to come forward and speak about things that happened to them that make them intensely uncomfortable.
Former Nevada state assemblywoman Lucy Flores wrote in an op-ed on Friday that while Biden was vice president, he came up to her from behind, put his hands on her shoulders, sniffed her hair and kissed her on the back of her head at a campaign rally supporting her bid for lieutenant governor.
{mosads}”The vice-president of the United States of America had just touched me in an intimate way reserved for close friends, family, or romantic partners — and I felt powerless to do anything about it,” she wrote.
Biden, who is expected to announce his 2020 candidacy soon, responded to the allegation in a statement Sunday.
The former vice president said that in his “many” years in public life, “I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. And not once – never – did I believe I acted inappropriately.”
“If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention,” he said.
Other 2020 candidates including Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Julián Castro have all said the initial reaction to similar allegations should be to trust the accuser.