Former Vice President Joe Biden dismissed criticism of his repeated gaffes on the campaign trail and argued they had nothing to do with his “judgment.”
Biden has made repeated gaffes on the campaign trail, wrongly stating the cities where mass shootings occurred and urging his followers to “choose truth over facts.”
Last week The Washington Post reported on a war story that Biden has often told, noting that he “got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient, as well as his own role in the ceremony" wrong in a span of three minutes.
Biden denied that he intentionally tried to mislead anyone with the story during an NPR podcast and told the outlet the mistakes have nothing to do with his ability to be president.
“The details are irrelevant in terms of decision-making,” he said.
"That has nothing to do with judgment of whether or not you send troops to war, the judgment of whether you bring someone home, the judgment of whether you decide on a healthcare policy," he explained.
Biden defends past record:
Biden defended his record on foreign policy, including his support for the Iraq invasion.
"I think my record has been good," he told NPR. "[Bush] looked me in the eye in the Oval Office. He said he needed the vote to be able to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam Hussein was engaged in dealing with a nuclear program. He got them in and before you know it, we had 'shock and awe.'"
Bush’s office denied Biden’s version of events. Though Biden claimed he opposed the war as soon as it began, he made numerous public statements backing the war effort much later.
"Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force, and I would vote that way again today," Biden said in a speech at the Brookings Institution on July 31, 2003. "It was a right vote then, and it'll be a correct vote today."
Former Defense Secretary Bob Gates, who worked in the Bush and Obama administrations, wrote in his 2014 memoir that Biden had been “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
