Biden lies about number of times visit Afghanistan Iraq claims his uncle Frank awarded Purple Heart
President Joe Biden appeared to be rewriting history on Friday afternoon, as he claimed to have visited the war-torn countries of Afghanistan and Iraq as many as 39 times, despite the actual number being closer to 21.
He made the startling claims while speaking to war veterans in Delaware while recounting a never-before-heard story of how his uncle Frank Biden earned a Purple Heart medal for his service during the 1944 Battle of the Bulge during World War II.
But there seemed to be some key details notoriously inaccurate, not to mention no evidence whatsoever that such an honor was ever bestowed.
Biden went on to explain how his father urged his brother, Frank, to receive the prestigious medal normally awarded to those wounded or killed while serving, on or after April 5, 1917, with the US Army.
The president claimed that all of this happened when he was elected vice president, in 2008. However, his uncle Frank passed away in 1999 and his own father died in 2002, making such a conversation impossible.
President Biden erred when he claimed that after he was elected vice president in 2008, he awarded his uncle, Frank Biden, a Purple Heart for World War II service.
President Joe Biden is seen in a photo of himself with his father, Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., left. On the right, Joe Biden’s uncle, Frank H. Biden, who served in World War II.
Frank Biden’s obituary also doesn’t mention being awarded a Purple Heart
‘My dad, when I was elected vice president in 2008, he said, “Joey, Uncle Frank fought in the Battle of the Bulge.” He wasn’t feeling too good right now, not because of the Battle of the Bulge, but he said, “and he won the Purple Heart and he never got it. He never got it. Do you think you could help him get it? He’ll be surprised,” the president said during his statements on Friday.
So I got him the Purple Heart. He had won it in the Battle of the Bulge. And I remember he came to the house and I went out and [my father] He said, “Introduce him, okay?” We had family there,” Biden continued.
“I said, ‘Uncle Frank, you’ve won this and I wanted…’ and he said, ‘I don’t want that damn thing.’ No, I’m serious, he said, “I don’t want it.” I said, “What’s up, Uncle Frank? You earned it.” He said, “Yes, but the others died. The others died. I lived. I don’t want it.”
The Battle of the Bulge was Adolf Hitler’s last major offensive in World War II in Belgium. It was the deadliest battle in history for the US Army, suffering 100,000 casualties.
Biden, 80, is well known for telling and often embellishing personal anecdotes while trying to build rapport with the public.
Friday’s falsehoods occurred during largely off-the-cuff comments to a group of veterans in Delaware as he tried to demonstrate veteran humility.
However, the very chronology of events would seem to indicate that this is not true.
Regarding Uncle Frank Biden receiving a Purple Heart, his tombstone does not identify that he received it as such, nor is it mentioned in his obituary.
Joe Biden, left, with his mother and father Catherine Eugenia (Jean) Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr., in the 1970s
Friday’s falsehoods occurred during largely unscripted comments to a group of veterans in Delaware as he attempted to demonstrate veteran humility.
Joe Biden’s father, Joseph R. Biden Sr., died in September 2002, more than six years before his Biden was elected vice president, while Joe Sr.’s brother Frank Biden died in 1999.
Regarding Frank Biden receiving a Purple Heart, his headstone does not identify him as receiving one as such nor is it mentioned in his obituary.
A list of Purple Heart recipients also does not name him, said the New York Post.
It is not the first time that Biden appears to have told such false stories.
In 2019 he spoke of a Navy captain who had allegedly refused to accept a Silver Star for heroics in Afghanistan. On that occasion the Washington Post said Biden “mixed elements of at least three real events into a story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.”
Biden also claimed to have visited Afghanistan and Iraq nearly 40 times, ‘twice as president’, but his last visit to Iraq was in 2016, while Afghanistan was in 2011. He is pictured at Baghdad’s Camp Victory in January 2011.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden talks with his son, US Army Capt. Beau Biden, at Camp Victory in July 2009 near Baghdad, Iraq. This was his first visit to Iraq as vice president.
On Friday, Biden’s comments contained further inaccuracies when he told veterans that he had been “in and out of Afghanistan, Iraq and those areas 38, 39 times as vice president, just twice as president.”
Biden has he traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq many times, including to visit his son who was serving in Iraq, but has never visited either country as president. The last time she was in Iraq appears to be 2016. For Afghanistan, it was 2011.
Several times this year, Biden incorrectly claimed that his son Beau Biden was killed in Iraq. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.
His father often blames his son’s illness and subsequent death on exposure to toxins from combustion pits in Iraq, used by the military to dispose of household garbage and other toxic substances.
It is a statement that he has repeated in the past. During his first State of the Union address, Biden claimed to have been to Iraq and Afghanistan “more than 40 times.”
Biden has developed a habit over decades of being cheap with the truth, often to connect with the audiences he speaks to.
Although proud of his Irish heritage, Biden claimed in October that he “was raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically” while visiting the island, even though there was a small Puerto Rican community in Delaware.
Also in October, he recounted how firefighters almost died in 2004 while putting out a fire in his kitchen. The local fire department later described it as “negligible” to trained professionals.
In January, he told students at historically black colleges in Atlanta that he was arrested during the civil rights protests of the 1960s, though there is no evidence of this.
The previous September, he told Jewish leaders he went to the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh following the 2018 murder of 11 people there.
The synagogue says he never visited, though he called the synagogue’s rabbi in 2019.
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