Biden on War Flub: 'Details Are Irrelevant'

Former VP says inaccuracies don't have a bearing on his decision-making abilities
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 3, 2019 5:03 AM CDT
Biden on War Flub: 'Details Are Irrelevant'
Joe Biden speaks to reporters during the Hawkeye Area Labor Council Labor Day Picnic, Monday, Sept. 2, 2019, in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.   (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)

Last week, the Washington Post detailed how Joe Biden had jumbled up three different war stories into one as part of a campaign anecdote about the bravery of troops. Biden initially defended the accuracy of his account, but he's now acknowledging the flub while calling it meaningless in the grand scheme, reports NPR. "The details are irrelevant in terms of decision-making," Biden says in an interview with Asma Khalid. The 76-year-old has long been prone to gaffes, but he says voters should not be concerned. When pressed on the details in the war story, for example, he said: "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 health care policy."

Politico has more from the same interview: “‘The fact that I would forget that it was [Maj. Gen. David] Rodriguez who was pinning—I believe this is the case—pinning a bronze star on a young man was—it’s irrelevant to the point," he tells Khalid. At the Hill, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Biden ally, says the media is making too big a deal of the former VP's slip-ups. Americans don't care, he argues. Biden's gaffes "are not outright lies; they're likely the result of a faulty memory or some confusion about the facts," writes Rendell. The man he wants to replace, by contrast, is a "Liar-in-Chief," he writes. (Biden also posed a jarring hypothetical on the campaign trail about Barack Obama.)

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