Biden again makes bizarre claim son Beau died 'in Iraq' to Marines — not from brain cancer
President Biden told US forces stationed in Japan that his son Beau perished in the Iraq War, a video obtained exclusively by The Post reveals — after the president stoked questions about his own mental acuity by making the same incorrect claim at least twice last year.
“My son was a major in the US Army. We lost him in Iraq,” the 80-year-old president said during an informal visit with troops at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni Thursday.
The traveling press corps, which has faced repeated access issues while covering the nation’s oldest-ever president, was kept far enough away that the remarks were inaudible.
The White House press office did not put out an official transcript, almost allowing the error to escape public notice.
Biden said in October of last year that Beau “lost his life in Iraq” and claimed the following month that Iraq was “where my son died.”
In fact, the president’s son died of brain cancer in 2015 at the Walter Reed military hospital in Bethesda, Md.
Such glaring factual errors are a political liability for Biden, who is seeking a second term in 2024.
A Washington Post-ABC poll released earlier this month found that just 32% of the public believes Biden has the mental sharpness required to serve as president.
Beau Biden died at 46 after being groomed to carry on his dad’s political legacy.
He was Delaware’s attorney general from 2007 to 2015 and the president often says he thought his son could have been elected to the highest office in the land.
In other public remarks, Biden has attributed his son’s fatal cancer to “burn pits” that disposed of military waste during Beau’s nearly yearlong deployment to Iraq in 2008 and 2009.
Biden stopped at Iwakuni en route to a summit of G-7 leaders in the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
The president proceeded to make other gaffes at the conference, including referring to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, whom he hosted for an April 26 state dinner, as “Loon” and repeatedly using the wrong title for Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, whom he called “president.”
Biden is seeking a second four-year term and would be 86 years old if he completes eight years in office. The frontrunner for the Republican nomination is 76-year-old former President Donald Trump, though he faces primary challenges from a number of younger GOP contenders.
