Joe Biden tells a scary family anecdote on two occasions in Pennsylvania. In the end, the White House rows back.
Pittsburgh – At a campaign event in Pittsburgh on Wednesday (April 17), US President Joe Biden revealed a family story that left many listeners disturbed. The 81-year-old claimed that his uncle was eaten by cannibals during World War II. However, the scary anecdote doesn't seem to be true.
Joe Biden |
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|---|---|
Born: |
November 20, 1942 in Scranton |
Political party: |
Democratic Party |
Government office: |
President of the United States (since January 2021) |
Eaten by cannibals: Biden spreads questionable theory about his own uncle
Biden suggested that U.S. forces failed to recover the body of his uncle Ambrose Finnegan after he crashed over New Guinea in 1944 as a lieutenant colonel in World War II while on a courier flight. The most powerful man in the world also gave the reason for this: “Because there used to be a lot of cannibals in the region.”
A day earlier, Joe Biden had recounted the story in his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, after visiting a memorial. Apparently the anecdote was also intended to be a reaction to statements made by his Republican opponent in the fight for the presidential election, Donald Trump, who a few years ago called fallen military personnel “losers”. Trump is therefore unsuitable as commander in chief of the US Army, said Biden.
Biden's uncle: body not found
According to the US broadcaster
CNN
, there were documented cases of cannibalism on the Pacific island of New Guinea in the 1940s. Again, the entry about Ambrose Finnegan in the online database of the Pentagon department DPAA, which conducts research on prisoners of war and fallen American soldiers, excludes the scenario outlined by Biden.
It says that the plane in which Finnegan was sitting in May 1944 had to make an emergency landing over the sea due to engine failure and crashed hard. Only one crew member survived; nothing could be found of the plane's other two occupants, including Biden's maternal uncle, or of the sinking wreckage during a reconnaissance flight the following day.
White House rows back
The White House has since admitted that Ambrose Finnegan was not eaten by cannibals. According to the
New York Post
on Thursday, press spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre explained
that the plane crash itself should be viewed as the cause of death.
Jean-Pierre noted that Biden simply wanted to express how proud he was of Finnegan with the anecdote. "You saw the president, he was incredibly proud of his uncle's service in uniform," the spokeswoman told some reporters. Recently, Joe Biden made an embarrassing faux pas during a visit by the Iraqi prime minister.
(chnnn)