(Vice) If there’s one thing Joe Biden loves more than approaching women from behind and putting his hands on their shoulders, it’s stealing valor. Not just troop valor, but coal miner valor, civil rights valor—if you’ve got valor, Joe Biden will steal it.
In a speech on Friday, the former vice president regaled the New Hampshire crowd with a very emotional story about a trip he once took into the “godforsaken country” of Konar province in Afghanistan. Advisors warned Biden that it would be too dangerous for him to go—but no, the vice president waved their concerns aside. “We can lose a vice president,” he recalled thinking. “We can’t lose many more of these kids.” He was going to present a Navy captain, who, under fire, had retrieved the body of another American soldier from a 60-foot ravine, with a Silver Star.
“This guy climbed down a ravine, carried this guy up on his back under fire,” Biden said. “The general wanted me to pin the Silver Star on him. I got up there, and this is the God’s truth, my word as a Biden. He stood at attention. I went to pin it on him. He said, ‘Sir, I don’t want the damn thing. Do not pin it on me, sir. Please, sir, do not do that. He died! He died!'”
