Before the 2019 Iowa State Fair, Katie Moon was just another student at Drake University, going on her final semester and majoring in digital media production. She grew up in the suburbs of Des Moines and identified strongly as a conservative.

But on Aug. 8, Moon attended the fair as a member of Turning Point USA, a far-right conservative student group she discovered in college. As was her goal, she got former Vice President Joe Biden's attention in the middle of a huge throng of cameras and reporters.

"How many genders are there?" she asked.

Biden said there were "at least three genders." Moon pressed him, Biden responded: "Don't play games with me," according to a video of the moment. The interaction between Biden and Moon only took a moment.

Presidential candidates who make themselves available to the media and the public are asked all kinds of questions. The Iowa caucuses encourage those person-to-person moments and, often, caucusgoers demand them. But some of those interactions, like the one with Moon, are designed only to embarrass the candidates and fuel partisan flames.

Turning Point made sure the Moon moment served that purpose.

'I wasn't sure what to expect'

Moon joined up with her local chapter of Turning Point, a student conservative group founded by firebrand Charlie Kirk in 2012 that claims more 300 chapters at colleges, while studying at Drake. The Drake chapter, like others, lacks official recognition as a student group at the university.

After her brief encounter with Biden, Moon was recorded by others with Turning Point, speaking out about what happened in that moment from her perspective, including her claim that Biden "grabbed" her.

Biden campaign officials declined to comment on the incident but from the video Turning Post posted it appear that Biden pulled her arm to bring her out of the crowd so he could tell her he was an early supporter of same-sex marriage.

While Moon was a willing participant in the moment, she told the Des Moines Register, "I wasn't quite sure what to expect" next.

"After I did the interview with people from Turning Point, they were amazing with helping out with the reaction. They were amazing at giving me a heads-up about what to expect if it goes viral," she said. "I wasn't even sure who was going to be posting it. It just happened to be on Charlie Kirk's personal Twitter."

Fewer than 24 hours after the incident, Turning Point's leader Charlie Kirk shared an edited video of Moon's encounter with the label "Joe Biden Grabs Co-Ed" with his 1.2 million followers.

The video now has more than 1.7 million views. It was picked up by traditionally conservative online outlets like Breitbart and The Federalist but was also aggregated by more mainstream publications like the New York Post and Newsweek.

Moon sees personal value in the moment

Though Moon never received a personal acknowledgment from Kirk for her part in creating the viral moment, she has been in direct contact with Benny Johnson, the former BuzzFeed writer who was fired for plagiarism in 2014 and now acts as Turning Point's chief creative officer.

For her participation, Moon was rewarded with an interview on Breitbart's Sirius XM channel and a burst of fame within the Turning Point organization and other conservative circles.

Moon said she would prefer to stay behind the scenes next time. She's hoping her interest in digital media and video, along with the visibility the Biden moment has brought her, will afford an opportunity for a career in politics.

Aaron Calvin covers trending news for the Register. Reach him at acalvin@registermedia.com or 515-556-9097.

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