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American president Joe Biden sparked online controversy after he claimed that he was raised in the Puerto Rican community in Delaware.
Following the impact of Hurricane Fiona, the 79-year-old politician paid a visit to Puerto Rico on October 3, where he met with the authorities of Ponce and surveyed the loss due to the storm.
He said:
"We have a very, in relative terms, a large Puerto Rican population in Delaware relative to our population. We have the eighth largest black population of the country and between all minorities we have 20% of our state [that] is minority. And so I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically. We came here for a long time as part of both business and pleasure. I'm committed to this island."
He also commented on the past federal government failing to help the island following natural catastrophes, mainly referring to 2017's Hurricane Marie.
"You haven’t gotten the help in a timely way. We came here in person to show that we’re with you. All of America is with you."
Twitter reactions to Joe Biden's speech
After Joe Biden claimed that he was raised in Delaware's Puerto Rican community, several Twitter users bashed him for not visiting Florida, which is currently experiencing Hurricane Ian. Biden, who was born in Pennsylvania's Scranton, moved to Delaware at the age of 11 because of his father's job.
Many users also trolled him for labeling himself as a Puerto Rican and pointed out his past speeches where he inflated a personal connection to the audience to connect with them.
Joe Biden's Puerto Rican comments came a month prior to the midterm election, where in his speech, he also noted that 20 percent of the state's population was from minority communities. However, he did not specify how many of those were Puerto Rican.
Joe Biden was elected to the United States Senate for the first time in 1972, two years after being elected to the New Castle County Council in Delaware.
According to the 1970 United States Census, Delaware had around 2,154 people who were either born in Puerto Rico or had Puerto Rican parents, accounting for roughly 0.39% of the First State's population of almost 550,000 people at the time, The New York Post reports.
Hurricane Fiona struck Puerto Rico earlier this month, at a time when the island had still not recovered from Hurricane Maria. Donald Trump's government had received severe backlash for its slow-paced response against the latter. Hurricane Fiona caused severe damage to the island, with infrastructural damages and massive power cuts.
This is not the first time that Joe Biden has tried to form a personal connection with the audience and raise eyebrows.
In September 2021, he told Jewish leaders that he recalled going to and spending time at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 after 11 people got murdered at an anti-Semitic attack.
The synagogue claimed that no visit from the president took place and the White House later claimed that he was talking about a phone call to the synagogue’s rabbi in 2019.
In January 2022, Biden told students at historically black institutions in Atlanta that he was detained numerous times while marching for civil rights – yet another claim for which there is no evidence.
