Springfield News-Sun

Biden misstates details of uncle’s WWII death, calls Trump unfit to lead

- By Zeke Miller

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Wednesday misstated key details about his uncle’s death in World War II as he honored the man’s wartime service and said Donald Trump was unworthy of serving as commander in chief.

While in Pittsburgh, Biden spoke about his uncle, 2nd Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., aiming to draw a contrast with reports that Trump, while president, had called fallen service members “suckers” and “losers.”

Finnegan, the brother of Biden’s mother, “got shot down in New Guinea,” Biden said. The president said Finnegan’s body was never recovered and “there used to be a lot of cannibals” in the area. Biden, who also relayed a version of the story earlier in the day after stopping by the memorial in Scranton, was off on the particular­s.

The U.S. government’s record of missing service members does not attribute Finnegan’s death to hostile action or indicate cannibals were any factor.

“We have a tradition in my family my grandfathe­r started,” said Biden, a toddler at the time of his uncle’s death in 1944.

“When you visit a gravesite of a family member — it’s going to sound strange to you — but you say three Hail Marys. And that’s what I was doing at the site.”

Referring to Trump, the presumptiv­e GOP presidenti­al nominee, Biden said, “That man doesn’t deserve to have been the commander in chief for my son, my uncle.”

Biden’s elder son, Beau, died in 2015 of brain cancer, which the president has stated he believes was linked to his son’s yearlong deployment in Iraq, where the military used burn pits to dispose of waste.

Some former Trump officials have claimed the then-president disparaged fallen service members as “suckers” and “losers” when, they said, he did not want to travel in 2018 to a cemetery for American war dead in France. Trump denied the allegation, saying, “What animal would say such a thing?”

According to the Pentagon’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Biden’s uncle, known by the family as “Bosie,” died on May 14, 1944, while a passenger on an Army Air Forces plane that, “for unknown reasons,” was forced to ditch in the Pacific Ocean off the northern coast of New Guinea.

“Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft’s nose hit the water hard,” the agency states in its listing of Finnegan. “Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash.”

 ?? ALEX BRANDON / ASSOCIATED PRESS ?? President Joe Biden reaches to touch the name of his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr. on a wall at a Scranton war memorial in Scranton, Pa., on Wednesday. His uncle died in WWII.
ALEX BRANDON / ASSOCIATED PRESS President Joe Biden reaches to touch the name of his uncle Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr. on a wall at a Scranton war memorial in Scranton, Pa., on Wednesday. His uncle died in WWII.

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