There has been an international response to some of Biden’s comments that were made during his visit to Pennsylvania.
“Ambrose Finnegan — we called him “Uncle Bosie” — he — he was shot down. He was Army Air Corps before there was an Air Force. He flew single-engine planes, reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He had volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He got shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals in New Guinea at the time,” Biden said. “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 and the like.”
Biden tells a story about his grandfather being “shot down in an area where there were a lot of cannibals” before recounting the debunked “suckers and losers” hoax for the second time in less than a day pic.twitter.com/KufaTlmCz1
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 17, 2024
Biden’s comments were heard around the world, and the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea was not happy.
“President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labelled as such,” Marape said. “World War II was not the doing of my people; however, they were needlessly dragged into a conflict that was not their doing.”
Marape added it’s time for the U.S. to get serious about “cleaning up these remains of WWII so the truth about missing servicemen like Ambrose Finnegan can be put to rest.”
An account listed by the ePentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency reported that Biden’s maternal Uncle ditched his plane “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.”
Why Biden told the story is anyone guess but the White House did not want to talk about it at all and attacked reporters for bringing it up.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden “highlighted his uncle’s story as he made the case for honoring our sacred commitment to — to equip those we send to war and to take care of them and their families when they come home.”
But when a reporter pushed back she attacked him.
“I mean, look, I — I don’t have anything beyond — but what I just laid out,” she replied, confirming the military’s account of what happened.
“His uncle … lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off … in New Guinea.”
