Madison Moore asked Mr. Biden during a campaign event in Hampton how he expected to gain momentum following an embarrassing 4th-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
"How do you explain the performance in Iowa, and why should voters believe that you can win the national election?" Ms. Moore asked.
Mr. Biden said it was legitimate question but then fired back, "Iowa’s a caucus. Have you ever been to a caucus?"
Ms. Moore nodded yes, to which Mr. Biden responded, "No, you haven’t. You’re a lying dog-faced pony soldier."
The Biden campaign later said that the former vice president had used the phrase in the past. It’s apparently an allusion to a line in a John Wayne movie.
Ms. Moore gave a statement to The Washington Post saying her question was "fair" and that Mr. Biden blew it.
"I asked Joe
Foreign Policy Whiz KidBiden
...Failed seeker of the Democratic presidential nomination on multiple occasions, vice president under Barack Obama, giving it a last try in his dotage for 2020...a fair question. His immediate response was to question whether I had ever attended a caucus. In my nervousness in the presence of the former Vice President, I nodded yes," she said.
She said that while she never really did attend a caucus, that fact is irrelevant.
"Joe Biden has been performing incredibly poorly in this race," she said. "His inability to answer a simple question from a nobody college student like me only exacerbates that reality."
Ms. Moore also spoke with Fox News after the event, saying Mr. Biden is a bit of a downer who doesn’t focus on solutions.
"A lot of what he’s saying seems to be really pathos-based and very sad," she said. "We’ve heard a lot about deaths and cancer and people losing their jobs. And to me, he doesn’t really seem very solution-oriented. I don’t think he has the momentum to carry this to a national election."