Coming next: A clip of Joe Biden windsurfing to the left, then tacking and windsurfing to the right.
The latest headlines say Biden was all for taking out Osama bin Laden before he was against it. Strike that: He was against it before he was for it. Or something like that.
Here’s what we know (or sort of know). Back in January 2012, while speaking at a Maryland retreat for congressional Democrats, Biden reminisced about a strategy session ahead of the bin Laden raid in May 2011.
“Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go — we have to do two more things to see if he’s there,” Biden said he told his then-boss, Barack Obama, during that session.
Others in the administration support that account. Leon Panetta, who served as Obama’s Central Intelligence Agency director, wrote in his 2014 memoir that Biden argued at the meeting “that we still did not have enough confidence that bin Laden was in the compound, and he came out firmly in favor of waiting for more information.” And then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in his 2014 memoir that “Biden was against the operation” when Obama polled the room. “Biden’s primary concern was the political consequences of failure,” Gates wrote.
But now Biden says he was all go, all the time.
In a Friday interview on Fox News, host Peter Doocy asked Biden if he would make the same decision President Trump made in taking out a top terrorist leader.
“As commander in chief, if you were ever handed a piece of intelligence that said you could stop an imminent attack on Americans — but you have to use an airstrike to take out a terrorist leader — would you pull the trigger?” Doocy asked.
“Well we did – the guy’s name was Osama bin Laden,” Biden said.
“Didn’t you tell President Obama not to go after bin Laden that day?” Doocy asked
“No, I didn’t,” Biden said.
Huh. Tack left, tack right, just like then-Sen. John Kerry did when he said in 2004 that he “actually did vote for the $87 billion [supplemental appropriation for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan] before [he] voted against it.” (The RNC put out a killer ad that showed Kerry surfing right then left, closing with “John Kerry: Whichever way the wind blows.”)
But wait, there’s yet another version.
In October 2015, Biden offered a different account, saying he didn’t tell Obama “don’t go.”
At a George Washington University panel discussion with former vice president Walter Mondale, Biden said he “withheld his opinion until he was alone with Obama after the meeting — then made clear to Obama, ‘as we walked out of the room, and walked upstairs,’ that ‘I thought he should go,'” CNN reported.
“Imagine if I had said in front of everyone, ‘Don’t go’ or ‘Go,’ and his decision was a different decision; it undercuts that relationship. So, I never, on a difficult issue, never say what I think, finally, until I go up in the Oval with him alone,” Biden said.
And now some old clips of Biden’s former colleagues — including Obama himself — are coming out to back up, well, one of his versions, anyway.
In an October 2012 debate with GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who expressed doubt on whether the U.S. should have taken out bin Laden, Obama said, “Even some in my own party, including my current vice president, had the same critique as you did.”
And in January 2012, a reporter asked Obama’s spokesman Jay Carney about Biden’s version that he “actually recommended against” hitting bin Laden. “Vice President Biden was one of the handful of people involved in this process and I certainly, I know that he’s speaking accurately.”
Cue the windsurfer.