President Joe Biden on Wednesday mischaracterized the circumstances of his uncle’s death during World War II as he criticized former President Donald Trump’s comments about the military.
“He got shot down in New Guinea, and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden said during his remarks referring to his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan.
However, U.S. military records about Finnegan’s death do not mention the aircraft being shot or discuss cannibalism.
“For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea,” the records say. “Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard.”
The records state that the three men who were killed in the crash were not found.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates did not directly address the apparent misstatement. He noted in a statement to NBC News that Biden was “proud of his uncle’s service in uniform, who lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea.”
“The President highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honoring our ‘sacred commitment … to equip those we send to war and take care of them and their families when they come home,’ and as he reiterated that the last thing American veterans are is ‘suckers’ or ‘losers,’” Bates added.
During his remarks, Biden compared the military service of his family to Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric about military members, such as Trump’s calling fallen soldiers “suckers” and “losers,” according to a report in The Atlantic. Trump denied making those remarks.
“‘Suckers’ and ‘losers.’ That man doesn’t deserve to have been the commander in chief for my son, my uncle,” Biden said during his speech.
Biden also often speaks about his son Beau Biden, who served in the Delaware Army National Guard and was deployed to Iraq. His son passed away in 2015 after a battle with brain cancer. Biden has previously mistakenly stated that he lost his son “in Iraq,” although his son died in the U.S. after returning home from military service. Biden also apparently misrepresented the war record of another uncle of his when he inaccurately spoke of trying to present a Purple Heart to his uncle Frank, according to FactCheck.org.
