By ALLIE YANG, ABC News
(MILWAUKEE) — Thirteen-year-old Brayden Harrington bravely shared Thursday night how he and former Vice President Joe Biden “are members of the same club — We stutter.”
The two met several months ago in Harrington’s home state of New Hampshire.
“Without Joe Biden, I wouldn’t be talking to you today,” Harrington said Thursday. “It was really amazing to hear that someone like me became vice president.”
Biden has spoken openly about his lifelong struggle with his stutter.
At a CNN town hall in February, he said a stutter is a “debilitating situation.”
“I deal with about 15 stutters I keep in contact with all the time,” he said in February. “I still [stutter] occasionally, when I’m really tired.”
Biden spoke then about how he marks his speeches to slow down his pacing. He passed Harrington similar tips.
“He told me about a book of poems by Yates he would read out loud to practice,” Harrington said. “He showed me how he marks his addresses to make them easier to say out loud, so I did the same thing today.”
The teen expressed his gratitude to the Democrat’s presidential candidate Thursday.
“I’m just a regular kid, and in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me feel more confident about something that’s bothered me my whole life,” he said. “Kids like me are counting on you to elect someone we can all look up to.”
“You know, stuttering, when you think about it, is the only handicap that people still laugh about,” Biden said. “That still humiliate people about.”
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