When and where did the 'dog-faced pony soldier' remark first surface during Biden's career?
Executive summary
Joe Biden’s “lying, dog‑faced pony soldier” line first surfaced in public reporting during the 2020 Democratic primary campaign, when he used it at a New Hampshire event on February 9–10, 2020, addressing a 21‑year‑old voter (reported by NBC, People and others) [1] [2]. Multiple outlets note Biden and his campaign have also said he used the phrase earlier—most commonly cited at a 2018 event for Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota—though exact origins remain unclear and Biden has attributed it to a John Wayne movie [3] [4].
1. First widely reported instance: New Hampshire, February 2020 — a campaign gaffe that trended
The clearest, widely reported emergence of the phrase in Biden’s modern national profile came at a New Hampshire town‑hall–style event just before that state’s 2020 primary, when Biden replied to a voter by saying “No, you haven’t. You’re a lying, dog‑faced pony soldier,” an exchange published by NBC and People on February 10, 2020 [1] [2]. Coverage treated the remark as an odd, old‑timey turn of phrase and noted the crowd’s reaction and subsequent campaign attempts to explain the line [1] [2].
2. Earlier uses reported by outlets: 2018 North Dakota rally for Heidi Heitkamp
News organizations digging into the phrase found Biden had deployed a similar line in 2018 while campaigning for Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota, where he used the phrase to describe her opponent Kevin Cramer, saying his brother “loves to use lines from movies” and recounting a John Wayne movie line about “a lying dog‑faced pony soldier” [4] [3]. Outlets treating that 2018 remark as an antecedent indicate the phrase was not novel to Biden in 2020 but had circulated in his remarks at least as far back as the mid‑late 2010s [3] [4].
3. Biden’s explanation: John Wayne movie reference — campaign claim versus reporting
Biden and his campaign have attributed the line to a John Wayne movie—saying it comes when “the Indian chief turns to John Wayne and says, ‘This is a lying dog‑faced pony soldier’” [3] [4]. Multiple news outlets report that investigators and film‑buff reporting could not find that exact line in Wayne’s films and that the phrase may mash up or misremember lines from different Westerns [4] [5]. Some pieces note plausible sources like the 1952 film Pony Soldier (which starred Tyrone Power) and elements from John Wayne films that use “dog‑faced soldiers,” but they conclude the precise cinematic origin is “elusive” or unclear [6] [5] [7].
4. How media framed it: oddball quip, campaign misstep, and later reuse
Coverage presented the line in three ways: as an idiosyncratic, archaic phrase that sounded strange in a retail political exchange [2]; as a minor campaign gaffe that fed criticism of Biden’s temperament and language [4]; and as a phrase Biden would later reuse in other contexts — for example, as quoted again in 2023 when he invoked the line during a press conference to criticize climate skeptics, coverage noting the comment was first deployed on the 2020 trail [8] [9]. The Independent and other outlets catalogued both the 2020 New Hampshire moment and earlier 2018 usage while emphasizing the murky origin story [9] [4].
5. Uncertainties, competing explanations, and what reporting does not show
Reporting explicitly notes uncertainty about the phrase’s cinematic birthplace: researchers and outlets could not locate the exact sentence in John Wayne’s films and suggested Biden may have conflated or misremembered Western dialogue, with some pointing to related lines in Pony Soldier and other films but not a verbatim match [4] [5] [7]. Available sources do not mention a precise, verifiable earlier instance of Biden using the phrase prior to 2018; they also do not establish an original historical source for the idiom beyond campaign and media attempts to trace it [4] [7].
6. What to take away
Documented public appearances by Biden using “lying, dog‑faced pony soldier” begin in reporting with the February 2020 New Hampshire event, with credible earlier usage traced to a 2018 North Dakota rally; Biden and his campaign attribute the wording to a John Wayne movie, but outlets that researched the claim say the exact film line is elusive and may be a conflation of Western-era lines [1] [3] [4]. Reporters present competing views—Biden’s stated origin versus film scholars’ inability to find the line—so the phrase’s precise provenance remains unresolved in current reporting [4] [7].