Former Vice President Joe Biden finally admitted that the story he’s been telling about getting arrested while visiting former South African President Nelson Mandela was false.
“I guess I wasn’t arrested,” Biden told CNN on Friday. “I was stopped. I was not able to move where I wanted to go.”
Biden said he refused to “go in that door that says white only” while traveling with the Congressional Black Caucus.
“They said, ‘You’re not, you can’t move, you can’t go with them,’ and... they kept me there until finally I decided that it was clear I wasn’t going to move. And so what they finally did, they said, ‘O.K., they’re not going to make the congressional delegation go through the black door, they’re not going to make me go through the white door,’” he told CNN.
That’s not what Biden said before:
"This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid. I had the great honor of meeting him. I had the great honor of being arrested with our UN ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robben Island," Biden claimed in South Carolina earlier this month.
"After he [Mandela] got free and became president, he came to Washington and came to my office. He threw his arms around me and said, 'I want to say thank you.' I said, 'What are you thanking me for, Mr. President?' He said: 'You tried to see me. You got arrested trying to see me,'" he later claimed in Nevada.
Campaign changed its story after South Carolina debate:
"He was separated from the [Congressional Black Caucus] members he was traveling with at the airport, when he landed," campaign spokesperson Kate Bedingfield said on Tuesday after dodging reporters questions for days. "It was a separation. He was not allowed to go through the same door as the rest of the party he was with. Obviously, this was apartheid South Africa. There was a white door. There was a black door. He did not want to go through the white door, and have the rest of the party go to the black door. He was separated."
