Joe Biden Walks Back Mandela ‘Arrest’ Comments: ‘Stopped, Not Arrested’ By White South African Cops in Shorts
Former Vice President and current Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was pressed about repeated references he’s made to being “arrested” while attempting to visit Nelson Mandela in prison, and described being “stopped, not arrested” by gun-toting white cops in “short pants.”
Biden was interviewed on Friday morning’s edition of CNN’s New Day, during which anchor John Berman asked Biden about a claim the Biden campaign recently walked back.
“You said that during your visit to South Africa to visit Nelson Mandela, which I know is a very memorable visit for you, that you were arrested when you were there,” Berman said, adding “Your campaign has come out since then, no no no you were separated from other people at the airport. But you did say arrest three times. Why?”
“Well what I meant to say was, I got off,” Biden began, then explained, “Look, I strongly opposed Apartheid, I was one of the leaders, and if you doubt it go on JoeBiden.com and look at the exchange between George Schultz and me in the Foreign Relations Committee.”
Biden then told the story of his encounter with white Afrikaner police at an airport in South Africa, in detail.
“And here’s the deal, I was with a black delegation, the CDC, the Congressional Black Caucus, they had me get off a plane, the Afrikaners got on in their short pants and their guns, led me off first and moved me in a direction totally different, I turned around and everybody, the entire black delegation was going another way,” Biden said.
“I said ‘I’m not going to go in that door that says white only, I’m going with them,'” Biden continued. “They said ‘You’re not, you can’t move, you can’t go with them.’ And they kept me there until finally, I decided, it was clear I wasn’t going to move. And so what they finally did was they said okay, they’re not going to make the congressional delegation go through the black door, they’re not going to make me go through the white door, they took us if memory serves me through a baggage claim area up to a restaurant, and they cleared out a restaurant.”
He then recalled Mandela thanking him years later for working against the Apartheid government and said “And so that’s the context of it when I said arrested I meant I was not able to move, cops, Afrikaners would not let me go with them, made me stay where I was. I guess I wasn’t arrested, I was stopped, I was not able to move where I wanted to go.”
Berman then moved on to another topic.
Watch the clip above via CNN.
