(LibertySons.org) – President Biden made another of his notorious “verbal gaffes” last week, fabricating a story about how an uncle died in the Second World War. His made-up tale has offended the people of Papua New Guinea, thanks to odd claims. Unfortunately, it’s a strategic island in the southern Pacific, and US policy is based on not offending its people.
Biden Invents A Story
In an April 17 speech to steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Biden talked about how his mother’s brothers had all enlisted in the US military the day after the D-Day landings in 1944. According to the president, “When D-Day occurred, the next day, on Monday,” all four of his maternal uncles had volunteered, including Ambrose Finnegan.
Biden claimed Finnegan had joined the United States Army Air Corps and become a pilot flying reconnaissance missions. Tragically, he explained, his uncle had been shot down on a mission over New Guinea; his body was never found because “there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”
Reporters quickly fact-checked the story and, of course, it turned out almost none of it was true. For instance, Second Lieutenant Ambrose Finnegan had indeed served in the USAAF, but he wasn’t a reconnaissance pilot; he was a ground crew officer. He wasn’t shot down by the Japanese, either. On May 14, 1944 –- almost a month before he supposedly enlisted –- he was a passenger on a twin-engine A-20 Havoc, a light bomber used for courier flights between New Guinea and New Zealand.
Both the plane’s engines failed and it ditched in the sea. One crew member managed to escape from the wreck and was rescued by a passing ship, but the other two and Ambrose Finnegan were still inside when it sank. Finnegan couldn’t have been eaten by cannibals because his body was inside a crashed plane at the bottom of the Pacific.
Lecturer Michael Kabuni from the University of Papua New Guinea called the story “unacceptable” and pointed out that these societies “wouldn’t just eat any white men that fell from the sky.” Provincial governor Allan Bird found the story “hilarious” and said he was “lost for words,” but others took it more seriously.
Right now, the US is mounting a charm offensive to reduce communist Chinese influence in Papua New Guinea, and making up offensive stories about the island’s people isn’t helping. University lecturer Maholopa Laveil complained that Biden’s “unsubstantiated” claims “paint PNG in a bad light” and said the president should never have told that story.
It’s bad enough that Biden’s wild tale wasn’t true, but if his fantasies are now offending people we want as allies, that’s a serious obstacle to him being able to do his job.
~Here’s to Our Liberty!
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