Not surprisingly, the email is a lie.
factcheck.org
From Factcheck.org
We have received several questions asking about the truth behind President Obama's June trip to visit wounded veterans at the National Naval Medical Center. Particularly noteworthy about this chain e-mail is its reference to specific facts regarding 1st Lt. David BORDEN Jr. Unlike the subjects of many chain e-mails we review, BORDEN is not a made-up character: He is a real person, who served in Iraq and has been profiled by York, Pa.'s Daily Record. Borden's story is inspiring, but the rest of this e-mail gets several facts wrong about the president's visit with BORDEN and other soldiers and Marines.
It's true that Borden's father, David BORDEN Sr., initially wrote a personal e-mail about the visit, according to Master Sgt. Joseph Liptok, the deputy director of the Marine Corps liaison office at the medical center. But, Liptok told us, the chain e-mail now being forwarded and posted on Web sites is an altered version of the original. He also emphasized that the views in the chain e-mail are not those of 1st Lt. BORDEN. We made several attempts to speak with BORDEN and his father, but they declined to comment.
Factual Inaccuracies
Several facts in the chain e-mail are contradicted by Liptok, who was present during Obama's visit on June 1, as well as by pool reports from a reporter covering the White House. The e-mail claims that "Dave Jr. was ordered to be at the National Naval Hospital with another 12 soldiers and Marines to meet with Obama." Liptok told us that "Obama met with 16 wounded soldiers and their families, as well as 25 staff members and ... five case managers." Liptok went on to say that the president met with outpatients as well. "Everyone enjoyed it, and he met a lot more people than when Bush visited before. The president will usually meet the inpatients but this time [Obama] met the staff and outpatients as well."
According to the pool report filed June 1, reporter Mike Shear of The Washington Post didn't attend the meeting but waited in a separate room for the president to finish his visit. He reported that after the visit Tommy Vietor, White House assistant press secretary, said that "[t]he president met with 26 inpatients and approximately 30 outpatients and their families. He also met with hospital staff. Additionally, the President awarded 2 Purple Hearts." Vietor told us he was not in the meeting, however.
The e-mail goes on to claim that the president arrived at the medical center at 3 p.m., three-and-a-half hours late. But Shear reported that Obama arrived in Marine One at 1:20 p.m. Liptok said the president was late but only "40 minutes off of his schedule."
The message also claims that Obama "quickly shook" hands with the wounded veterans while pausing for a photo, but "[h]e never asked their names,
where they were from, or how they were injured. Then he left." Shear's report, however, says that Obama left the hospital at 2:35 p.m., an hour and 15 minutes after he arrived. Liptok told us that the description of the visit in the e-mail is "absolutely not" accurate. "He had a conversation with each marine individually," Liptok said. "He made conversation and took a group photo, and one with each individual, then met the inpatients and outpatients."
Liptok also said that 1st Lt. BORDEN knew that this false e-mail was making the rounds on the Internet and that he was "extremely upset." Liptok continued: "He had nothing to do with the e-mail, and didn't know about it until after it was sent out. ... None of those views were his views." Liptok told us he passed along questions from FactCheck.org to BORDEN and his father, but both declined to comment. We also tried to reach both men through a reporter at the York, Pa., paper that had profiled BORDEN. The reporter told us she left phone messages for them on our behalf, and we called what we believe to be BORDEN Sr.'s home phone number but did not reach him. |
