“I want to be clear; I’m not going nuts,” the 76-year-old former vice president told an audience in New Hampshire on Friday after being unable to recollect a speech he gave at Dartmouth College only hours prior. “I’m not sure whether it was the medical school or where the hell I spoke. But it was on the campus.”
The defense comes as Biden has worried even his staunchest allies for often confusing times and places on the campaign. Last week, while addressing voters in Iowa, Biden mistakingly claimed that Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated during the late 1970s.
“Just like in my generation, when I got out of school, when Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in the ’70s — the late ’70s — I got engaged,” Biden told the audience, before proceeding to ramble about the counter-culture movement of the 1960s.
The statement was quickly called out as false, as both men were assassinated within mere months of each other in 1968 — a turbulent year in American history. The confusion was especially troubling for Biden, who has often cited both men as big influences on his decision to enter politics.
Biden was supposedly so taken with Kennedy, whom he once called “the one true hero of my life,” that he plagiarized substantially from his fallen hero during the 1980s.