Joe Biden has been telling a story on the campaign trail that he was arrested in the 1970s in South Africa as he tried to visit Nelson Mandela in prison.
More on that dubious tale in a bit. But President Trump has an even better (and provably true) story of his own about the South African anti-apartheid revolutionary and politician.
“One of the last details to be arranged in Nelson Mandela’s hastily orchestrated tour of the United States was lining up the aircraft that would take him to the eight cities on his itinerary,” The Los Angeles Times reported on June 25, 1990.
After feverish and failed negotiations with everyone from the U.S. government to private charter operators, the unlikely benefactor has turned out to be none other than Donald Trump.
Mandela and the approximately 80 people traveling with him arrived here Sunday in a Trump Shuttle 727 and will take the same plane on the rest of the tour, which ends in Los Angeles and Oakland late this week. The Trump shuttle also carried Mandela from New York to Boston on Saturday.
Christine Dolan, who handled logistics for the trip, said that organizers, desperate to find a plane in time for Mandela’s arrival in the United States last Wednesday, contacted Trump seeking to rent his private jet. He responded that it was being serviced and unavailable but offered to release a 727 from his shuttle fleet, Dolan said.
But Trump, ever the businessman, didn’t miss the art of the deal: Organizers paid $130,000 to charter the plane, a little more than $16,000 per city, Dolan said. Still, Trump was there when Mandela needed a plane, and the organizers were appreciative. “The Mandela Welcoming Committee is very thankful to Donald Trump,” Dolan told The Times.
Biden’s story is vastly different — and so far uncorroborated. Biden says he was arrested in Soweto, a suburb of Johannesburg, a city in the northeast of the country. But at the time, Mandela was being held on Robben Island, near Cape Town in the southwest part of the country.
The two sites are some 900 miles apart.
What’s more, since The New York Times on Friday called Biden’s tale into question, journalists have been unable to find any news reports or contemporaneous accounts mentioning an arrest. Biden was a U.S. senator at the time of his claimed arrest, which certainly would have made news.
“In at least three campaign appearances over the past two weeks, Joseph R. Biden Jr. has told a similar story as he tries to revive his campaign in states with more diverse voters. On a trip to South Africa years ago, he has said, he was arrested as he sought to visit Nelson Mandela in prison,” the Times reported in its piece.
“This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid,” Mr. Biden said at a campaign event in South Carolina last week. “I had the great honor of meeting him. I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robbens Island.”
Mr. Biden referred to his own arrest twice more in the next seven days, including at a campaign stop here on Tuesday where he spoke of getting arrested in South Africa between efforts to coax his wife to marry him. That proposal occurred in 1977, both Bidens have said.
But Biden never mentioned the arrest in his memoir. the Times also said, “A check of available news accounts by The New York Times turned up no references to an arrest. South African arrest records are not readily available in the United States.”
Since then, no other journalist has found a contemporaneous account.
And the Times said Biden has never mentioned the story on the campaign trail until last week. The Democratic primary approaches in South Carolina, where support from black voters will be key.
The Times reached out to Andrew Young, a former congressman and mayor of Atlanta who was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1977 to 1979. Young said he traveled with Biden on a trip to South Africa.
“No, I was never arrested and I don’t think he was, either,” Young, 87, told the Times.
Biden is adding new twists to the story each time he tells it, too. Last Sunday, he added more details about Mandela.
“After he got free and became president, he came to Washington and came to my office,” Biden said at a black history awards lunch in Las Vegas. “He threw his arms around me and said, ‘I want to say thank you.’ I said, ‘What are you thanking me for, Mr. President?’ He said, ‘You tried to see me. You got arrested trying to see me.’”