One day after 2020 Democrat Joe Biden was confronted over his telling of an apparent false war story, the former vice president’s campaign peddled a news report on voters dismissing the mistakes he makes on the trail.
“ICYMI — CBS News: ‘So what?’: South Carolina Democrats not bothered by Joe Biden’s gaffes,” read the subject line of a Biden campaign email sent to reporters Friday with the article attached.
One voter, in the Palmetto State for Biden’s two-day swing, said the presidential contender was “human” and his propensity to misspeak made him “real, not scripted.”
“So what? I do too,” Will Cokley said.
Nancy Clarkson Fowler, however, was concerned Biden was “not quite tough enough” to take on President Trump. “He’s already called him Sleepy Joe and made fun of the gaffes he’s made, even when Trump called Dayton Toledo right after the gun massacre,” she said.
[Related: ‘He keeps saying stupid stuff’: Iowa Democrats concerned about Biden’s gaffes]
It’s not the first time the Biden team has relied on an “ICYMI,” or “in case you missed it,” email blast to mitigate a bout of negative press. It sent reporters a flurry of polls to prove a Monmouth University survey, which found the race was in a statistical tie between Biden, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, was an outlier.
The Washington Post reported Thursday that a story Biden recounted in New Hampshire last week was a conflation of several different events.
“In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony,” the newspaper wrote.
Delaware’s senator for 36 years told a crowd of about 400 in Hanover, New Hampshire, last Friday that an older Navy captain had begged him not to present him with the Silver Star during a 2008 trip to Afghanistan’s Kunar province. He said the captain had propelled himself down a cliff to retrieve the body of a fellow service member who had died.
But his tale appears to be largely based off a 2011 awards ceremony in Afghanistan’s Wardak province where he pinned the Bronze Star on younger Army Staff Sgt. Chad Workman after Workman had tried to save a friend from a burning vehicle.
Biden told South Carolina’s The Post and Courier Thursday he relayed “the essence of the story.”
The former vice president’s reputation for verbal missteps has been evident as he vies for the White House for a third time following unsuccessful bids for the 1988 and 2008 nominations. During the same New Hampshire visit, he confused the early-voting state for Vermont. Earlier this month in Iowa, he compared the intellects of “poor kids” and “white kids” and incorrectly said he met with survivors of the 2018 Parkland shooting while he was vice president. He left office in 2017.
