President Joe Biden mysteriously ended a speech this week in Connecticut with the phrase “God save the queen, man,” confusing people in attendance and people on the internet.
“Several of you have asked me why he might have said that,” Dallas Morning News pool reporter Todd Gillman wrote Friday. “I have no idea.”
Biden was speaking in Hartford Connecticut for the National Safer Communities Summit. Most of the speech was about efforts to mitigate gun violence and the impact it has on U.S. communities.
“There’s far too much gun violence, but that’s why this summit is so important,” he said.
During the speech Biden, who at 80 is the nation’s oldest sitting president, also made jokes about his age. He referred to himself at one point as “a little under 103,” and made references to his mother.
“All kidding aside, a lot of people are frustrated,” said the president. “My mother, God love her – all 5-foot-1 – Catherine Eugenia Finnegan – she’d look at me and say, ‘Joey, never bow. Never bend. Never yield. Never kneel.’ We never will on this issue.”
Though he touted legislation already passed to address gun violence, Biden also pushed for more in his speech. He supports reinstating a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines, for example.
Near the end of the speech, Biden wondered out loud whether he would be able to take photos with attendees due to an expected storm. At that point he used another phrase that has confused people in the past.
“If that’s the truth, now, don’t make a lie – as that – as that scene in the John Wayne movie, ‘Don’t make me a dog-faced, lying pony soldier,’” he said.
Back in 2020, Biden called a New Hampshire voter a “lying dog-faced pony soldier” during an event and has said that it is a quote from a John Wayne movie. Insider noted that the origin of the quote is unclear. Wayne was known for Westerns and there is a 1952 Western called “Pony Solider,” but Wayne is not in it.
“Biden has the extremely odd habit of ending his remarks with cryptic phrases whose significance is mostly legible only to him,” said Yoni Appelbaum, deputy editor of The Atlantic, in a tweet. Appelbaum said Biden also said “God save the queen,” right after certifying former President Trump’s election results in 2017. “He seems to use it to mean something like, ‘God help us all.’”
Some also wondered if it was a reference to Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September at 96. During her reign, Britain’s National Anthem “God Save the King” was altered to be “God Save the Queen”, and it reverted when her son, King Charles III, took the throne.
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