Jill Biden Pushing Away Vegan Protesters

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Part of a series on Joe Biden. [View Related Entries]

About

Jill Biden Pushing Away Vegan Protesters, also known as Lunging Vegans, refers to viral media showing an activist rushing on stage during former Vice President Joe Biden's Super Tuesday speech in early March 2020. Following the incident, video of the encounter and a photograph of Jill Biden pushing the activist away were widely circulated online.

Origin

On March 3rd, 2020, the Bloomberg Politics Twitter account^[1] shared the photograph with the caption "Jill Biden trending on Twitter for her moves to defend her husband from protesters." The post received more than 3,200 likes and 1,000 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Hours later, The Washington Post^[2] posted the article "Jill Biden’s epic tussle: In split-second blocking maneuver, she protects husband from lunging vegans." The headline is the first to use the expression.

Spread

That day, NBC News published a video of the incident on YouTube. The post received more than 13,000 views in less than 24 hours (shown below).

The expression soon became a trending topic on Twitter, where people joked about the expression. For example, congressman David Cicilline tweeted,^[3] "Find you someone who will protect you from lunging vegans like Jill Biden." The tweet received more than 1,000 likes and 175 retweets in less than 24 hours (shown below, left).

Throughout the day, others joked about the expression (examples below, center and right).

Several media outlets covered the incident and expression including Daily Kos,^[4] The Takeout,^[5] Fast Company^[6] and more. Twitter^[7] published an Events page on the incident.