President Joe Biden falsely implied that he supported the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden during a Wednesday speech.
“I said, along with many others, we would follow Osama bin Laden to the Gates of Hell if need be and that is exactly what we did. We got him,” Biden said during a speech in which he promised to remove all American troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021.
However, Biden opposed the late night raid on the al Qaeda leader’s Abottabad compound, while Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain was the one who said that he would follow bin Laden to the Gates of Hell.
Navy SEALs killed bin Laden on May 1, 2011 at the 9/11 mastermind’s Abottabad compound, where he reportedly lived for years.
While then-President Barack Obama approved the operation, Biden cautioned against deploying the SEALs.
“Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go. We have to do two more things to see if he’s there,” then-Vice President Biden recalled telling Obama to a group of reporters in 2012. (RELATED: Trump Campaign Strikes Back At Biden Over Iran Comments: ‘He Even Opposed Taking Out Osama Bin Laden’)
John McCain, not Biden, said that he would go to the Gates of Hell to get bin Laden.
“I want to look you in the eye today my friends and say that if I have to follow him to the Gates of Hell, I will get Osama bin Laden. I will bring him to justice,” McCain promised a group of voters on the eve of South Carolina’s 2008 Republican presidential primary.
Biden has a track record of lifting quotes and stories and passing them off as his own. His climate plan plagiarized passages from documents published by various environmentalist groups. Biden was forced to drop out of the 1988 presidential primaries after he admitted to plagiarizing from a law review article during his time at Syracuse Law School.
During the same campaign, Biden was caught borrowing the life story of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.