SIX Times Joe Biden Cited Major Life Events That Never Actually Happened
2020 frontrunner has a history of gaffes, why should we be surprised?
© press
It is fair to say Democratic 2020 frontrunner Joe Biden has become a gaffe machine.
His continued slip-ups and blunders have become so glaringly apparent that even the liberals rooting for him are becoming embarrassed.
Recently, Biden claimed twice he met with Parkland, Florida, shooting survivors when he was Vice President, but there was one small problem.
He was out of office when the attack took place.
In a panicked attempt to clear up Biden's pretty big and insensitive mistake, his campaign argued that Biden misspoke and was referring to a different meeting he had with the Sandy Hook shooting victims.
But this blunder was just one example of how Biden has become increasingly foggy when it comes to pretty big historical events.
Biden was forced to drop out fo the 1998 presidential race after it was discovered he exaggerated his academic record, plagiarized a law school essay, and stole politicians quotes for his speeches without any attribution.
Here are the six times Biden cited events that never happened:
© press
1. Biden claims his helicopter was “forced down” in Afghanistan, close to Osama bin Laden’s lair.
Biden once claimed in a 2008 speech that he knew where Osama bin Laden was hiding because his helicopter had been “forced down” in Afghanistan.
“If you want to know where al Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,” said Biden.
“Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”
He also claimed in another speech that al Qaeda is "in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan … where my helicopter was recently forced down.”
Later, he reffed to “the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down.”
“John McCain wants to know where bin Laden and the gates of Hell are? I can tell him where,” said Biden.
But the truth was the helicopter landed to wait out a snowstorm, the Associated Press reported.
Biden, John Kerry, and Chuck Hagel were on a Senate junket in Afghanistan when the aircraft came near the storm.
The pilot landed as a precaution.
“Other than getting a little cold, it was fine,” Kerry told the AP when asked about the incident.
“We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs,” he joked.
© press
2. Joe Biden, the coal miner
In 2008, while running for president, Biden told the United Mine Workers that he was a coal miner.
“I hope you won’t hold it against me, but I am a hard-coal miner, anthracite coal, Scranton, Pennsylvania,” Biden said.
“It’s nice to be back in coal country. It’s a different accent [in Virginia], but it’s the same deal. We were taught that our faith and our family was the only really important thing, and our faith and our family informed everything we did.”
But Biden later admitted his comment was a “joke," despite being similar to his claim about coming from a family of coal miners during his 1988 campaign.
In a 1988 speech, Biden said, “my ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours.”
But the line was plagiarized from a speech by British politician Neil Kinnock, who was telling the truth and actually was from a family that worked in the mines.
Biden admitted the truth in 2004.
“Hell, I might be president now if it weren't for the fact I said I had an uncle who was a coal miner. Turns out I didn't have anybody in the coal mines, you know what I mean? I tried that crap — it didn't work,” he said.
© press
3. Hero Biden was “shot at” in Iraq
In 2007, Biden claimed he was “shot at” during the Iraq War while visiting the Green Zone.
“Let’s start telling the truth,” he said.
“Number one, you take all the troops out — you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at.”
When Biden was pressed for details about the shooting, a campaign aide told the Hill that the then-senator was comfortable and safe in his hotel when a mortar landed several hundred yards away.
“A soldier came by to explain what happened and said if the mortar fire continued, they would need to proceed to a shelter,” the aide said.
© press
4. Biden called Slobodan Milošević a “damn war criminal” to his face, or did he?
Well no.
Biden met with Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević in 1993, in his book, Promises to Keep, Biden claimed he said: “I think you’re a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one," to Milošević.
Biden aide Ted Kaufman, who was at the meeting and also worked on Biden’s 2008 campaign, told the Washington Post that the account was accurate.
But strangely, three other Biden aides who were also at the meeting declined to corroborate the story.
John Ritch, a senate aide who attended the Milošević meeting, said he did not recall Biden making such a dramatic pronouncement, according to the Post.
“The legend grows,” said Ritch.
“But Biden certainly introduced into the conversation the concept that Milošević was a war criminal. Milošević reacted with aplomb.”
© press
5. Biden claimed he participated in sit-ins at segregated restaurants and movie theaters
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Biden regularly claimed he was an activist in the civil rights movement, saying he participated in sit-ins along U.S. Route 40 in Delaware in 1961.
”When I was 17 years old, I participated in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie houses in my state, and my stomach turned upon hearing the voices of Faubus and Barnett, and my soul raged upon seeing the dogs of Bull Connor,” said Biden in 1983.
He also claimed to have organized a boycott of a segregated restaurant in Wilmington called The Pit after he restaurant refused to serve a black member of his football team.
“I organized a civil rights boycott because they wouldn’t serve black kids. One of our football players was black, and we went there, and they said they wouldn’t serve him. And I said to the others, ‘Hey, we can’t go in there.’ So we all left,” said Biden.
But Biden's story was contradicted by the football player, saying Biden was not aware of the incident until later.
“They weren’t aware of what happened,” said the football player in 1987.
“I was only 16 then. It was my problem and my battle for me to work out. They were oblivious to it until later.”
"During the 1960s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement. I was not an activist. I worked at an all-black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, Delaware," he said.
"I was involved in what they were thinking, what they were feeling. But I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma. I was not anywhere else. I was a suburbanite kid who got a dose of exposure to what was happening to black Americans."
© press
6. Biden claimed he criticized President George W. Bush in private meetings at the Oval Office
In 2009, Biden claimed he spent “a lot of hours alone” with President George W. Bush while rebuking the president over his foreign policy decisions.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN.
"'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn around and look behind you. No one is following.’”
But Bush aides told Fox News in 2009 that they couldn't recall any private meetings between Biden and the president.
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Congress, told Fox News.
"I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval.
"He was such a blowhard on all that stuff — there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
