“The Daily Show” took a bite out of President Joe Biden’s recent claim that his uncle Ambrose Finnegan — “Uncle Bosie” — might have been eaten by cannibals after his plane went down during World War II.
Biden told the story during a campaign stop in Pennsylvania last week, saying that “Uncle Bosie” had been a part of the Army Air Corps in the Pacific when he was “shot down” over Papua New Guinea.
“He flew those single-engine planes as reconnaissance over war zones, and he got shot down in New Guinea. They never found the body because there used to be, there were a lot of cannibals, for real, in that part of New Guinea,” Biden said at the time.
Both the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape tell different stories, however. According to the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, Finnegan’s plane was not shot down at all, but suffered an engine failure and had to ditch over the water. Marape issued a statement after Biden’s comments went viral, saying, “President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such. World War II was not the doing of my people; however, they were needlessly dragged into a conflict that was not their doing.”
“The Daily Show” gave Biden’s story a comedic makeover on Tuesday, courtesy of Jordan Klepper and Ronny Chieng.
WATCH:
Daily Show hosts Jordan Klepper and Ronny Chieng mock Biden saying his uncle was eaten by “cannibals.”
“You’re going to lose the election.”
— Julianna Frieman (@JuliannaFrieman) April 24, 2024
The segment began with Chieng noting that the Manhattan hush-money trial of former President Donald Trump left the campaign trail wide open for Biden — and then they cut to Biden’s story about “Uncle Bosie.”
“You’re going to lose the election,” Chieng responded afterward.
“Look, at some point, we all get to an age when we confuse our own life story with the plot of ‘Indiana Jones,'” Klepper argued.
“Even if this story was true, Americans are in no position to criticize how anyone else eats, okay? These cannibals eat people … yeah, well, you know what? We eat Subway sandwiches to lose weight,” Chieng riffed.
“Would a cannibal even eat people out of a wreckage?” Klepper wondered. “I mean, that’s like their version of eating roadkill … Biden apologized to the Papua New Guinea prime minister by inviting him to a dinner with Pete Buttigieg, who will be served over rice with balsamic reductions.”