Biden lies about number of visits to Afghanistan. Iraq claims his Uncle Frank received Purple Heart

President Joe Biden appeared to be rewriting history on Friday afternoon when he claimed to have visited the war-torn countries of Afghanistan and Iraq up to 39 times, when the true number was closer to 21.

He made the startling claims while speaking to war veterans in Delaware while telling them a previously unheard story of how his uncle Frank Biden won a Purple Heart medal for his service during the 1944 Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

But there appeared to be some obviously inaccurate key details, let alone no evidence that such an honor was ever bestowed.

Biden went on to explain how his father urged him to give his brother Frank the prestigious medal normally awarded to those wounded or killed in the US military on or after April 5, 1917.

The president claimed all of this happened when he was elected vice president in 2008. However, his uncle Frank had passed away in 1999 and his own father died in 2002, making such a conversation impossible.

President Biden slipped up when he claimed that after being elected vice president in 2008, he awarded his uncle Frank Biden a Purple Heart for service in World War II

President Joe Biden can be seen in a photo of himself with his father, Joseph Robinette Biden Sr., at left. That’s right, Joe Biden’s uncle, Frank H. Biden, who served in WWII

Frank Biden’s obituary also doesn’t mention that he was awarded a Purple Heart

“When my father was elected vice president in 2008, he said, ‘Joey, Uncle Frank fought in the Battle of the Bulge.’ He wasn’t feeling very good now – not because of the Battle of the Bulge, but he said, ‘And he won the Purple Heart and never received it. He never got it. Do you think you could help him get it? We will surprise him,” said the President during his speech on Friday.

“So I got him the Purple Heart. He had won it in the Battle of the Bulge. And I remember he came over the house and I came out and [my father] said, “Present it to him, okay?” We had the family there,” Biden continued.

“I said, ‘Uncle Frank, you won and I wanted -‘ and he said, ‘I don’t want the damn thing.’ No, I’m serious, he said, ‘I don’t want it.’ I said, “What’s the matter, Uncle Frank? He said, “Yes, but the others died. The others died. I survived. I don’t want it.”

The Battle of the Bulge was Adolf Hitler’s last major offensive in Belgium during World War II. It was the deadliest battle ever for the US Army, which suffered 100,000 casualties.

Biden, 80, is known for telling and often embellishing personal anecdotes while trying to connect with audiences.

Friday’s untruths occurred during largely unwritten remarks to a group of veterans in Delaware as he attempted to demonstrate veteran humility.

But the mere sequence of events seems to indicate that this is not true.

Regarding Uncle Frank Biden receiving a Purple Heart, there is no mention on his headstone of receiving one as such, nor is it mentioned in his obituary

Joe Biden, left, with his mother and father, Catherine Eugenia (Jean) Finnegan Biden and Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr., in the 1970s

Friday’s untruths occurred during largely unwritten remarks to a group of veterans in Delaware as he attempted to demonstrate veteran humility

Joe Biden’s father, Joseph R. Biden Sr., died in September 2002, more than six years before his Biden was elected vice president, while Frank Biden, Joe Sr.’s brother, died in 1999.

Regarding Frank Biden receiving a Purple Heart, there is no mention on his headstone of receiving one as such, nor is it mentioned in his obituary.

A registry of Purple Heart recipients also doesn’t name him, the New York Post noted.

It’s not the first time Biden appears to have told such false stories.

In 2019, he spoke of a Navy captain who allegedly refused to accept a Silver Star for heroic actions in Afghanistan. On that occasion, The Washington Post said Biden “confused elements of at least three actual events into a story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.”

Biden also claimed to have visited Afghanistan and Iraq nearly 40 times, “twice as president,” but his last visit to Iraq was in 2016, while he was in Afghanistan in 2011. He is pictured at Camp Victory in Baghdad in January 2011

Then-Vice President Joe Biden speaks with his son U.S. Army Capt. Beau Biden in July 2009 at Camp Victory near Baghdad, Iraq. This was his first visit to Iraq as Vice President

On Friday, Biden’s remarks contained further inaccuracies when he told veterans he had been “38, 39 times as vice president in and out of Afghanistan, Iraq and these territories, only twice as president.”

biden Has traveled to Afghanistan and Iraq many times, including to visit his son who was serving in Iraq, but he has never visited either country as President. The last time he was in Iraq appears to have been in 2016. For Afghanistan it was 2011.

Biden has falsely claimed multiple times this year that his son Beau Biden died in Iraq. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46.

His father has often attributed his son’s illness and subsequent death to exposure to toxins from Iraqi fire pits used by the military to remove household waste and other toxic substances.

It’s a claim he’s repeated in the past. During his first State of the Union address, Biden claimed to have been to both Iraq and Afghanistan “over 40 times.” The actual number is closer to 21, some of which happened when he was still a US Senator from 1973 to 2009.

Biden has developed a habit over the decades of being somewhat parsimonious with the truth — often to connect with the audiences he’s speaking to.

Though he’s proud of his Irish heritage, Biden claimed in October, “I kind of grew up in the Puerto Rican community back home, politically,” when he visited the island, even though there is a tiny Puerto Rican community in Delaware.

Also in October, this told how firefighters nearly died while putting out a fire in his kitchen in 2004. The local fire department later described the operation as “insignificant” for trained professionals.

In January, he told students at historically black Atlanta colleges that he was arrested during the civil rights protests of the 1960s — although there’s no evidence to support this.

Last September, he told Jewish leaders he went to the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh after 11 people were killed there in 2018.

The synagogue says he never visited, although he called the synagogue’s rabbi in 2019.