(Headline USA) During his visit to Japan this week, President Joe Biden once again falsely claimed that his elder son, Beau, died in Iraq.
“My son was a major in the U.S. Army. We lost him in Iraq,” Biden said in an exchange with troops at the Marine Corps Air Station in Iwakuni, Japan, on Thursday.
Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015—six years after his military service—at the Walter Reed military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.
When asked why the president continues to falsely claim that Beau died in military service, White House spokesperson Robyn Patterson claimed Biden was trying to draw attention to the adverse effects Iraq’s “burn pits” had on Beau’s health.
“The President talks, as the families of many veterans do, about losing Beau in Iraq because his brain cancer was likely caused by prolonged exposure to burn bits while serving in Iraq,” Patterson said in a statement.
Athough some gold-star families—particularly the parents of those lost during Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal—have directly criticized Biden to his face regarding his stolen valor, the president seems to have little concern over separating fact from fiction when embellishing his stories in service of a broader talking point.
Any gaffe that I have made—and I’ve made gaffes like every politician I know has—have been not about a substantive issue,” Biden told late-night comedian Stephen Colbert during the 2020 campaign when questioned about his made-up war stories.
He insisted that they were not lies so long as they were inconsequential.
“… I don’t get wrong things like, you know, there is, uh, we should lock kids up in cages at the border,” he said. “… The devil lives in the details if the details that you’re talking about would affect the outcome of something that is about to happen or should happen.”
Biden has frequently lied about his son’s death. In 2022, for example, he told a crowd in Colorad that his son “lost his life in Iraq.”
“I say this as a father of a man who won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq,” Biden said at the time.
About a month later, Biden made the same claim while addressing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“There’s a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia’s doing—excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” he said implying that the slip was unintentional. “I’m thinking Iraq, because that’s where my son died.”
Biden’s G7 visit drew attention for other reasons. At one point, he told a reporter who asked him about debt ceiling negotiations to “shush up.”
He also called South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whom he has met before, “Loon” and used the wrong title for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, calling him “president.”
