The full text of the exchange between Biden and the activist follows.

Question: “I’m Armenian, and I want to thank you for the work you did in the Senate. I have a question. I am very involved in the Armenian American community and as you know we’ve been…”

Vice-President Biden: “Oh, I know.”

Question: “… we’ve been very, very burned. I want to know what is the message that we should be giving to our community?”

Biden: “What you should be giving to your community is that we are not backing off. The Turks have to come to the realization of what the reality is. And what we got to do is, you know, this, the compromise that was going on and being worked at for a while… Tell them that it was the ArmenianPresident that called me and said ‘Look, do not force this issue now, while we are in negotiations.’ We passed. That’s past right now.  So anyway, reality has a way of intruding.”