Fox News Sunday anchor Chris Wallace asked Joe Biden to explain why he told a specious story of being arrested with a United Nations delegation while visiting South Africa during apartheid.
On at least three occasions this month, Biden said, on the campaign trail, he was “arrested with our U.N. ambassador” while trying to meet South African leader Nelson Mandela in the 1970s, prompting the now-former ambassador, Andrew Young, to refute the story. Biden later admitted he fabricated details of the story, saying, “I wasn’t arrested. I was stopped.”
Wallace asked Biden on Sunday whether he flubbed the tale or purposefully to exaggerate it.
“You now say you weren’t arrested, and it didn’t happen in Soweto. You were at the airport in Johannesburg, and you were stopped from going through the door for blacks. I guess the question is: Were you confused or were you just trying to embellish a story?” Wallace asked.
“No, what I was trying — what I was doing was talking about the fact that I was strongly opposed to apartheid. When we landed, we were going to Soweto, actually. We landed in Johannesburg, and the Afrikaners took me off the plane, took me in one direction, wanted me to go through a white-only door, and in fact, I wouldn’t move,” Biden said, referring to the congressional delegation trip as a senator.
“I said everybody else is going through another door. I’m going with the black delegation that I came with,” Biden continued. “They said no, you can’t. I said, ‘Well, I’m standing here. I’m not going to move.’ And they would not let me move anywhere, so I guess I should’ve said I was detained. I was not able to move forward.”
Biden won nearly 50% of the vote in the South Carolina primary after struggling to gain traction in the other early state contests. He still trails Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the overall delegate count.
