Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday defended the "central point" of a war story he told on the campaign trail last week as "absolutely accurate" after a report exposed a slew of incorrect details, NBC News reported.
According to the Washington Post, Biden appeared to have "jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened" during a campaign stop in Hanover, New Hampshire, last Friday. He told the crowd about a Navy captain in Afghanistan who climbed down a ravine under fire to rescue a fellow service member who had been shot, later attempting to refuse a medal from the vice president because the man had died.
The Washington Post report — based on interviews with more than a dozen troops, commanders, and Biden campaign officials — traced the details of Biden’s recounting to three different tales of bravery. While Biden had awarded a medal to a brave soldier, it wasn’t the medal he said it was, the soldier didn’t do what Biden recounted, and the incident didn't occur where Biden said it had.
"I don't understand what they're talking about, but the central point is it was absolutely accurate what I said," Biden said of the Post's report in an interview with the South Carolina newspaper Post & Courier.
Biden, who was campaigning Thursday in the Palmetto State, told the newspaper that there are two war stories from Afghanistan he routinely tells, but denied he conflated the details.
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