Politics

Biden mum about bin Laden raid during five-hour golf outing with Dodd in 2011

Paul Conner Executive Editor
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Maybe Joe Biden can keep his mouth shut.

On April 30, 2011, the day before the raid that killed terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden, the vice president played a five-hour round of golf with his longtime friend, former Sen. Chris Dodd.

Dodd told The Daily Caller last week that Biden never mentioned the preparations for the Special Forces raid or the internal debate in the White House about whether to go forward with the attack.

“Joe and I have been friends for 36 years, and all day long, we played five hours alone together, and he never mentioned a word to me,” Dodd said at a Washington, D.C., screening of the television film “SEAL Team Six.” “Not that he should have. It would have been wrong for him to do it.”

Biden is known for speaking his mind, often with awkward and embarrassing consequences. He recently joked at a campaign rally about “being a good Biden” by not responding to an attack ad by Gov. Mitt Romney.

At a Democratic fundraiser after the raid, he hyped it as the “most audacious” plan in 500 years. Biden himself opposed the raid, but has since lavished praise on President Barack Obama for approving of the raid.

Obama’s appearance at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner in 2011, in which he mocked himself, his political opponents and Donald Trump just hours before Navy SEALs breached bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is widely known.

But Biden’s whereabouts on April 30 are less well-known, especially given that White House schedules for the vice president given to the press are generally less detailed than for the president.

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