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Biden ‘jokes’ family ‘disappointed’ grandfather wasn’t notorious crime boss murderer after bizarre tall tale

September 3, 2024 | | Print Article

Smiles and nods accompanied President Joe Biden’s return to the campaign trail as he fondly recounted an accusatory tale of his great-grandfather being a murderer.

Even well-rested, as he appeared to be phoning in the duration of his term, the resident-in-chief was markedly incoherent Monday in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when he stumped for Vice President Kamala Harris. While he mumbled and garbled his way through the Labor Day campaign speech, a notably intelligible portion came with dark, supposed humor as he tied his ancestor to the Molly Maguires.

“I remember when my great-grandfather was only the second Catholic elected statewide in the state Senate here in Pennsylvania,” Biden’s tale about Edward Francis Blewitt began. “And I remember they talked about — when they’d run against him in 1906 — they said, ‘Guess what?’ He said, ‘He’s a Molly Maguire.'”

Setting the scene for the secret society amid Irish emigration to escape the Great Potato Famine, the president detailed, “A lot of the English owned the coal mines, and what they did was they really beat the hell out of the mostly-Catholic population in the mines. Not a joke.”

“But there was a group they called the Molly Maguires. And Molly Maguires, if they found out the foreman was taking advantage of an individual, they would literally kill him. Not a joke. And they would bring his body up and put him on the doorstep of his family,” he continued. “Kind of crude, but I gotta admit they accused my great-grandfather of being a Molly Maguire — he wasn’t, but we were so damn disappointed.”

“That was a joke. That was a joke,” Biden immediately followed, seemingly referring to the “disappointed” quip.

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign shared the clip with the caption, “Cognitively impaired Joe Biden tells a weird story about how his grandfather was accused of being a ‘Molly Maguire’ while running for political office in 1906. Kamala spent 3.5 years claiming that this guy is perfectly fit mentally for the job as president.”

As was so often the case with the president’s odder tales, often overlooked by corporate media too transfixed with the hyperbole of Trump’s speeches, it wasn’t the first time that Biden had voiced his chagrin at the fact that his ancestor wasn’t, in fact, a vigilante murderer for Irish miners.

In 2008, then-Delaware Sen. Joe Biden told the story with a different ending when campaigning with then-Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, the Bristol Herald Courier reported.

“He went out of his way to prove that he wasn’t, and we were all praying that he was,” the career politician had said.

While Biden told his tale after he returned to the White House having spent the better part of two weeks on vacation, the same day that he responded to the murder of an American hostage of Hamas while two U.S. Marines were assaulted by terrorist sympathizers in Turkey, Harris could be seen nodding along, smiling and laughing with the crowd as criticism poured in over the performance.

Kevin Haggerty
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