The word gaffe is just not accurate…it’s a lie. President Joe Biden declared on Thursday that he “never said a negative thing” about the late Senator John McCain (R-AZ). But if you just do a quick search of his statements during the 2008 presidential campaign, you see the truth.
Biden shared the untruth at a White House ceremony honoring McCain. He was given posthumously the Presidential Medal of Freedom. McCain’s wife Cindy accepted the award.
“I will admit to my Democratic friends I’m the guy who encouraged John to go home and run for office, for real, because I knew what incredible courage, intellect and conscience he had,” Biden said. “We ran against each other, which I didn’t like, on tickets for the highest office in the land. I was a candidate for vice president, he was the candidate for president. I never stopped admiring John. Never said a negative thing about him in my life because I knew his honor, his courage, and his commitment.”
“I never stopped admiring John. Never said a negative thing about him in my life because I knew his honor, his courage and his commitment.”
Pres. Biden posthumously awards the late Republican Sen. John McCain with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. https://t.co/52OXTbD6W2 pic.twitter.com/k8jxYxlGWA
— ABC News (@ABC) July 7, 2022
While Biden was running for vice president and McCain was running for president, Biden called McCain an “angry man.”
He also said, “You can’t call yourself a maverick when all you’ve ever been is a sidekick.”
And during a speech in Florida, Biden said, “what a majority of American people are looking for — a steady hand, leadership, an optimist; not an angry man, lurching from one position to another.”
The president accused McCain of trying to take “the low road to the highest office in the land.”
Biden even suggested that McCain, a former Vietnam POW and Navy pilot, was cowardly after asking during a New Mexico speech, “Who is the real Barack Obama?”
“In my neighborhood where I came from if you got something to say to a man, look him in the eye and say it,” Biden said.
