Biden acknowledges he wasn't arrested in South Africa despite earlier claims [View all]

[bluewater]

Link to tweet

Better late than never.

Former Vice President Joe Biden on Friday acknowledged that he wasn't arrested in South Africa during a visit to the country in the 1970s despite recently claiming that he had been.

"When I said arrested, I meant I was not able, I was not able to move ... I wasn't arrested, I was stopped. I was not able to move where I wanted to go," Biden told CNN's John Berman on "New Day."

Biden had recently claimed multiple times on the campaign trail that he was arrested on the trip to South Africa during apartheid. He's used the story as part of his larger efforts to connect with African American voters ahead of the South Carolina primary, where a big showing is critical if he is to remain viable in the race.
Visit CNN's Election Center for full coverage of the 2020 race

"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 said at his South Carolina launch party in Columbia earlier this month.
On February 16, Biden said that he "got arrested trying to see" Nelson Mandela in prison, and on February 18, he said the same thing again as part of a story about trying to get his wife, Jill, to marry him.

The New York Times could not find any mention of an arrest in a review of news accounts, and a former United States ambassador to the United Nations, who had joined Biden on that trip, rebutted Biden's account to the newspaper.

Yeah, Joe just misspoke.