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Hilarity ensues when Biden declares he was ‘sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community’

October 4, 2022 | | Print Article

When it comes to politicians pandering for votes it’s hard to predict what they may say, but President Joe Biden seems to be in a class all his own.

From the gangster “Corn Pop” to kids rubbing down his blond leg hairs at the pool, you can expect the man who has been in politics for half a century to say just about anything, and that now includes Biden declaring that he was “raised in the Puerto Rican community at home.”

The president visited Puerto Rico on Monday to survey damage from Hurricane Fiona, vowing that he was so “committed” to the island that he — see US taxpayers — was going to “rebuild it all.” After all, he’s practically Puerto Rican himself.

“I come from a little state — the little state of Delaware,” he said in his remarks, adding that “we have a very, in relative terms, large Puerto Rican population in Delaware — relative to our population. We have the eighth-largest black population in the country. And between all minorities, we have 20 percent of our state is minority.”

“And so I — I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically,” Biden continued. “And so, we came here for a long time, both for business and pleasure, since you’re part of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals and Delaware is as well. And I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I spent a lot of time in the northern part of the state.”

That’s all good and fine, except that only about 2,000 people of Puerto Rican ancestry lived in Delaware when Biden was launching his career five decades ago, according to the New York Post, which further noted that he “did not describe any links to Puerto Ricans in Delaware in his 2007 memoir ‘Promises to Keep.'”

“According to the 1970 US Census, Delaware had about 2,154 people who were either born in Puerto Rico or descended from Puerto Rican parents — roughly 0.39% of the First State’s population of nearly 550,000 at the time,” the Post reported.

Of course, Biden knows the media at large will sweep this all under the rug lickety-split.

On a positive note, the soon-to-be 80-year-old president provides the nation with plenty of opportunities for jocularity… here’s a quick sampling of responses to the story from Twitter:

Tom Tillison
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