White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre defended President Joe Biden’s questionable tale about his Uncle Bosie being eaten by cannibals in New Guinea after his plane got “shot down” in the Pacific during World War II.
When Jean-Pierre was asked about the story while she was headed to Philadelphia, she defended her boss, saying that his uncle would be proud of him.
A reporter had jokingly asked if the press secretary had a “cannibal tab” in the binder she goes to press briefings with.
Laughing, Jean-Pierre said, “There’s no cannibal tab, what are you talking about?”
“Is that what you’re asking about?” she then asked, after which the report confirmed his question.
In response to the reporter, Jean-Pierre said, “You saw the president, he was incredibly proud of his uncle’s service in uniform. You saw him at the war memorial, it was incredibly emotional and important to him.”
Going on to repeat part of Biden’s story, Jean-Pierre said Biden’s uncle “lost his life after the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific Ocean off – near New Guinea.”
She then managed to attack former President Donald Trump, saying that Biden did not see service members as “suckers or losers.”
Quizzed about the accuracy of the story, Jean–Pierre declined to add anything to Biden’s claims other than saying “it was a really proud moment for him.”
Karine Jean-Pierre defends Biden's dubious story about his "Uncle Bosie" being eaten by "cannibals" in New Guinea: "It was a really proud moment for him" pic.twitter.com/mS5lc5dxX7
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 18, 2024
During his speech on Wednesday, Biden said that his uncle had “got shot down in New Guinea and they never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea.”
Telling the same story earlier in the day during a visit to a World War II memorial in Scranton, Biden said, “He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time. They never recovered his body, but the government went back when I went down there and they checked and found some parts of the plane.”
The president’s story differs greatly from government records, which say that the plane had gone down due to mechanical failure.
“For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea. Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard,” a Pentagon report on the incident says.
“Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash. One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no trace of the missing aircraft or the lost crew members,” the report added.
