President Biden claimed on Friday that his uncle Frank Biden won the Purple Heart for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II – but there isn’t a evidence of the award and key details of the story are chronologically not possible.
The 80-year-old commander-in-chief has a habit of sharing fake or embellished personal anecdotes to bond with the audience, and he told his latest seemingly implausible story during largely unscripted remarks to veterans in Delaware.
“My dad, once I was elected vice chairman [in 2008]he said, “Joey, Uncle Frank fought in the Battle of the Bulge.” He wasn’t feeling thoroughly right away – not due to the Battle of the Bulge, but he said, “He won the Purple Heart and never got it.” He never got it. You think that you might help him get it? We are going to surprise him,” the president recalled.
“So I gave him a Purple Heart. He won it in the Battle of the Bulge. And I keep in mind that he got here home and I left and [my father] he said, “Show it to him, will you?” We had family there,” Biden continued.
![President Biden speaks in New Castle, Del., Friday, December 16, 2022.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/joe-biden-veterans-town-hall-01.jpg?w=1024)
“I said, ‘Uncle Frank, you won it, and I desired to…’ and he said, ‘I do not fucking wish to.’ No, I’m serious, he said, “I don’t desire that.” I said, “What’s the matter, Uncle Frank? You earned it.’ He said, “Yes, but others died. Others died. I used to be alive. I don’t want it'”.
Biden told this story apparently to attract attention to the humility of veterans, but the known facts indicate that this is just not true.
Biden’s father, Joseph R. Biden, Sr., died in September 2002 — greater than six years before his son was elected vice chairman. Frank Biden, brother of Joe Sr., died in 1999.
![President Biden speaks in New Castle, Del., Friday, December 16, 2022.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/joe-biden-veterans-town-hall-02-1.jpg?w=1024)
The White House didn’t immediately reply to The Post’s request for comment. The Department of Defense directed inquiries to the Army – the military branch where Frank Biden served – but the Army didn’t respond immediately.
Frank Biden’s tombstone doesn’t discover him as a Purple Heart honoree, nor does it his obituary. AND a partial record of the known Purple Heart recipients also don’t record anyone by that name receiving an award, although this database is just not exhaustive.
The Post’s librarians couldn’t locate earlier references to Frank Biden receiving a Purple Heart, which recognizes wounded and dead soldiers, in the Nexis archives and Factba.se repository Joe Biden’s public statements also make no prior reference.
![The grave of Biden's uncle Frank at the Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/frank-biden-va-grave-marker.jpg?w=1024)
The story about Uncle Biden is analogous to a different emotional but false story told by then-presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2019. The Washington Post fact-checking he has since said Biden “blended elements of not less than three real-life events into one story of courage, compassion, and grief that never happened.”
Biden made other questionable remarks on Friday, including telling veterans that “twice as president” he had been “in Afghanistan, Iraq and people areas” and beyond – though he had never visited Afghanistan and Iraq as president and had never come close little closer than the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, nearly 300 miles from the Iraqi border.
Biden is the oldest U.S. president in history, and his mental acuity is usually the subject of public debate – especially after he asked “Where’s Jackie?” when Congressman Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) looked for the deceased in September, despite publicly mourning her death and even calling for condolences from her family in August. Over and over this yr, Biden has incorrectly said that his son Beau Biden died in Iraq.
![Frank Biden served in the U.S. Army during World War II and died in 1999.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/frank-biden.jpg?w=970)
But Biden also has a long-standing habit of stretching the truth and ended his first presidential campaign in 1987 as a result of a speech plagiarism scandal and law school document.
Then-Senator Biden infamously borrowed British politician Neil Kinnock’s family history – Biden altered geographical data to falsely claim in speeches that “my ancestors … worked in the coal mines of northeastern Pennsylvania and would are available after 12 hours and play football for 4 hours.” Unlike Kinnock, who used the line to explain his family in Wales, Biden’s ancestors didn’t mine coal.
Biden also falsely claimed in 1987 that he “graduated with three degrees”, was called “an impressive student in the political science department”, “went to law school on a full academic scholarship – he was the just one in my class with a full academic scholarship” and “graduated in the top half of its class. None of those claims were true.
Since becoming president, Biden has shared many false or embellished stories, apparently attempting to connect with the public.
In October, Biden doubtfully stated that “I used to be form of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically” while visiting the United States territory, though there was only a really small Puerto Rican community in Delaware when he began his profession.
At a hearth safety event later that month, Biden said firefighters were nearly killed fighting a hearth in his kitchen in 2004, prompting the local fire department to explain the fire as relatively “insignificant” to trained professionals.
Biden admitted in September during a visit to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that “I used to be not arrested” for attempting to visit Nelson Mandela during the apartheid era, despite saying so not less than thrice in 2020. But Biden went on to say that “I used to be arrested “disabled” during a congressional trip to the small country of Lesotho near South Africa – despite fellow traveler, former congressman Don Bonker (D-Wash.), says the Washington Post in 2020, he “didn’t remember” this version of the story in any respect.
![Photo of President Biden.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/12/joe-biden-veterans-town-hall-03.jpg?w=1024)
In May, Biden said at a Naval Academy graduation ceremony that he was drafted into the military school in 1965 by the late Senator J. Caleb Boggs (R-Del.). A search of Boggs’ archives turned up no evidence of the nomination. The date also doesn’t match Biden’s college years, and Biden’s request to defer the Vietnam War draft raises further doubts about the account.
In January, Biden told students at historically black colleges in Atlanta that he had been arrested during a civil rights protest — for which isn’t any proof.
Biden told Jewish leaders in September 2021 that he remembers “hanging out” and “going” to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue after the 2018 mass murder of 11 people in the worst anti-Jewish attack in U.S. history. The synagogue said he had never visited, and the White House later said it was considering of calling the synagogue’s rabbi in 2019.
Also last September, Biden told listeners in Idaho that his “first job offer” got here from a neighborhood lumber and wood products company, Boise Cascade. The corporate said it was latest to them, and Biden had not previously described interest in moving to the state.