I want to approach this issue with extreme sensitivity because it's undeniably true that: (a) Joe Biden's first wife was, in fact, killed in a tragic car accident in 1972, along with the couple's young daughter -- and (b) he also lost his son, Beau, to cancer in 2015. Losing a spouse and two children is an inordinate amount of heartache for any man to bear in his lifetime. Also, I can personally attest that Biden has been a great source of comfort to many people dealing with heartbreaking loss, including a dear friend of mine. Standing with people through their grief has been a calling card for Biden throughout his public life, to the point that one media outlet referred to it as his "super power." But are some central details of the 1972 incident that Biden has repeatedly shared over the years...not true? This 2008 story from a local news outlet in Delaware, which I had never seen before today, is astonishing:
So Biden has repeatedly said his first wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver, when the truck driver was not drunk and "police determined that Biden’s first wife drove into the path of Dunn’s tractor-trailer"? Yeeeeesh. https://t.co/6E4wfw69VJ via @nwkpost
— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) October 16, 2019
Newark resident Pamela Hamill wants a public apology from vice presidential candidate U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), who she says has repeatedly besmirched her late father, Curtis C. Dunn. Dunn was the tractor-trailer driver involved in the December 1972 accident that took the life of the newly-elected U.S. Senator’s first wife, Neilia, and 13-month-old daughter, Naomi. Dunn died in 1999, but his daughter says she’s fed up with Biden publicly mischaracterizing him as having been drunk when the accident occurred. According to Delaware Superior Court Judge Jerome O. Herlihy, who oversaw the police investigation 36 years ago as chief prosecutor, there is no evidence supporting Biden’s claim...“The rumor about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the truck driver (Dunn), is incorrect,” Herlihy said recently. Police determined that Biden’s first wife drove into the path of Dunn’s tractor-trailer, possibly because her head was turned and she didn’t see the oncoming truck. Dunn, who overturned his rig while swerving to avoid a collision, ran to the wrecked car and was the first to render assistance. Police filed no charges against Dunn...
Ms. Hamill said at the time that she and her family were distraught and angry:
Hamill says she defended Biden at first, believing that, perhaps, his words had been misconstrued. But her disbelief turned to anguish when shown a video of Biden making his unfounded assertion during a public appearance. Biden told the crowd, “A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly and killed my daughter instantly and hospitalized my two sons …” Hamill wants to clear her late father’s name before Biden’s story is even more widely accepted as fact. “Suppose he becomes the next vice president,” she said. “Movies could be made about him and books could be written about him, all falsely portraying my father as a drunk driver. We need to set the record straight and clear my father’s name right now before this goes any further.”
This issue has apparently been floating since the 2008 campaign, and it's bubbled up again this cycle. As I mentioned earlier, I'd never heard about it until now, and I find it to be bizarre and disturbing. How and why did Joe Biden start inserting this extra, apparently baseless, detail about that wreck in 1972? The whole situation is sad enough, why embellish it with what amounts to be an unsupported smear of a man who -- according to the authorities -- was not drunk, did not cause the accident, and immediately sought to "render assistance" to the victims? At what point did Biden stop telling this tale? Has he acknowledged the family's objection, or apologized for perpetuating a terrible accusation against a man who'd long since passed away? As of 2009, months after this issue became a minor controversy, he had not.
Politicians -- including, if not especially, Biden's top Democratic and Republican opponents -- are often guilty of embellishment. This one is particularly ghoulish and strange. If Biden had been wrongly informed about a drunk driving component of the crash at the time, but later discovered that it was not rooted in fact, wouldn't the decent course of action be to immediately and publicly correct the record and offer a deep apology to the family of the man in question? I'll leave you with a new development on Elizabeth Warren's latest tall tale (which is less significant and damning than her self-serving racial hoax, but underscores her proclivity for inventing dubious truths for her own gain):
2010 Profile: Elizabeth Warren "Felt Stifled" By "Administrative Constraints" At Her 1970s Teaching Job via @__TheScript__https://t.co/vJBJcokCFc pic.twitter.com/t8NL58aaZj
— Jeryl Bier (@JerylBier) October 17, 2019
This is yet another data point that strongly suggests Warren was not fired for being pregnant, as she's claimed repeatedly on the campaign trail.
