The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, confirmed on Thursday that President Joe Biden’s maternal uncle, Ambrose Finnegan, died in a plane crash in the Pacific Ocean during World War II and was not eaten by cannibals, as Biden implied on two separate occasions on Wednesday. Jean-Pierre stated that Biden was merely expressing his pride in his uncle’s service when he suggested that natives in New Guinea had eaten Finnegan in 1944.
Jean-Pierre noted that the 81-year-old president was emotional while visiting a war memorial bearing his uncle’s name in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and spoke about his uncle’s service. Biden told reporters that his uncle was shot down in an area with many cannibals and that his body was never recovered.
However, the official U.S. military account of Finnegan’s death contradicts the president’s story. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Finnegan’s plane crashed into the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea due to engine failure, and neither the missing aircraft nor the lost crew members were found.
Biden’s statements about his uncle’s death appear to be part of a pattern of personal anecdotes that may not always align with factual records.
