Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden doesn’t appear to be too bothered by his multiple gaffes, slip-ups, and sometimes inaccurate stories.
In a recent interview with NPR Politics Podcast and Iowa Public Radio, he insisted that the smaller details that he sometimes gets wrong has nothing to do with his policy-making decisions.
“That has nothing to do with judgment of whether or not you send troops to war, the judgment of whether you bring someone home, the judgment of whether you decide on a healthcare policy,” Biden said.
“The details are irrelevant in terms of decision-making,” he added.
More recently, the former vice president raised eyebrows after the Washington Post called him out on a story that he has told about the war in Afghanistan. According to the Post, almost every detail about that story appeared to be factually incorrect, mixing and mashing details from at least three different events.
In his version of events, Biden said that he traveled to Afghanistan as vice president to recognize a Navy captain and award him a Silver Star for his bravery after he rappelled down a 60 foot ravine while under fire to retrieve the body of an American comrade. The Navy captain, according to Biden, did not want the Silver Star.
However, according to the Post, Biden was a senator when he visited Afghanistan, not vice president. The service member who performed the brave rescue was an Army specialist, not a Navy captain. And that soldier, whom the Post identified as Kyle J. White, never had the Silver Star, or any medal pinned on him by Biden. It would be six years after Biden’s visit that President Barack Obama would instead place a Medal of Honor around White’s neck.
Following the fallout of the article, Biden told reporters at a Labor Day picnic in Cedar Rapids, Iowa that it was never his intention to “mislead anybody.”
“[Details] matter in terms of whether you’re trying to mislead people. And I wasn’t trying to mislead anybody,” he said, according to CNN.
“My point is, I was there. The fact is, the point I was trying to make, I’d make again,” he added. “The valor and honor of these warriors are as significant as any warriors we’ve ever had in the history of the United States of America. That was my point.”