Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Monday came to the defense of former Vice President Joe Biden amid allegations that Biden has inappropriately touched women, saying that Biden is a “warm, tactile person.”
“He reaches out and he touches and it’s like this and that. It’s hardly sexy,” Feinstein said, according to Politico.
“It’s a new thing that people have been affronted by it. Over 25 years I’ve never seen that before,” she added.
{mosads}Although Biden has yet to officially announce his candidacy for president in 2020, Feinstein has already thrown her support behind him. “My candidate would be Joe Biden,” she said in January.
In recent days, two women have come forward to accuse Biden of inappropriately touching them.
Lucy Flores, a former state lawmaker in Nevada, said Friday in an essay published in New York Magazine’s The Cut that Biden touched her shoulders and kissed the back of her head before a Nevada campaign event in 2014.
In response to the accusation, Biden said in a statement on Sunday that he has “offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort” but doesn’t believe he ever acted inappropriately.
A second woman, Amy Lappos, came forward on Monday, saying Biden touched her and rubbed noses with her at a 2009 political fundraiser.
“It wasn’t sexual, but he did grab me by the head,” Lappos told the Hartford Courant.