In 2014, during a speech to the Legal Services Corporation, Vice President Joe Biden used an anti-Semitic slur in reference to lenders who make bad loans to members of the military, calling them, “Shylocks.”

The word “shylock,” which has been used to refer to loan sharks, is an eponym from a Jewish character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Jewish Americans have publicly challenged the portrayal as an insult to Jews for more than 50 years, according to a review of TIME’s archive, even as it remained a fixture of the modern lexicon. Today, “shylock” is considered an antisemitic slur, and, after being called out by the Anti-Defamation League, Biden apologized for his “poor choice of words.”

Yahoo News wrote about the incident – In his remarks, the vice president described the experience of his son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who was deployed for one year in Iraq.

“People would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being — I mean, these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas,” Biden said.

“Shylock represents the medieval stereotype about Jews and remains an offensive characterization to this day. The Vice President should have been more careful,” Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman said.

Watch the video here:

Does anyone else find it curious that after a lifetime of working as an elected official, Joe Biden still hasn’t figured out how to keep his private thoughts from escaping his mouth?

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