https://youtu.be/Z4RNi4hjwxs
Joe Biden’s telling of a moving but fact-starved war story – the Washington Post found at least seven stated falsehoods – was no mere “gaffe” by a politician who sadly has lost a few steps, contends political commentator Mark Steyn.
It was a premeditated act typical of Biden’s efforts to “aggrandize” himself throughout his nearly 50 years in politics, Steyn said Thursday on the Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“This is classic Biden,” he said of the 2020 presidential hopeful regarding the telling of the tale at a campaign event Aug. 23 in Hanover, New Hampshire.
“This is Biden in top form where he does this vivid, coherent, brilliant narrative in which not a single detail is correct.”
Steyn observed that the media and the punditry have viewed the war story through the lens of the frequent occasions on the campaign trail in which Biden has stumbled over words or forgotten names. This week, for example, he referred to the G7 as the G8 before saying “if I have any expertise, it’s in American foreign policy.” And later he appeared to forget the name of the president for whom he served as vice president.
But Biden has a long reputation, Steyn pointed out, for playing fast and loose with facts in his storytelling, because the point of the story is to “aggrandize Joe Biden.”
He dropped out of the 1988 presidential campaign amid accusations he plagiarized speeches of Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock.
His story at the New Hampshire campaign event centered on a visit to a war zone in Afghanistan. He told supporters he shrugged off concerns about his safety when he decided to go there to honor a Navy captain for retrieving the body of a dead colleague during battle.
‘I don’t understand what they’re talking about’
On Thursday, Biden claimed innocence after the Washington Post reported that after speaking with more than a dozen military and campaign sources, the paper determined the event “never happened” and that “almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect.”
Biden, the Post said, conflated details from three separate stories.
“In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony,” the paper said.
Yet Biden insisted in an interview with The Post and Courier of Charleston, South Carolina, on Thursday that the “central point” of the story is true.
“I don’t understand what they’re talking about, but the central point is it was absolutely accurate what I said,” Biden told the paper while acknowledging he had not read the Post story.
Biden was asked if he had conflated details.
“No, I don’t think so,” he said, “you guys can take it and do what you want with it.”
