Joe Biden Pulls a Dick Cheney, Refers to Nonexistent ‘Rows of Crosses’ at Arlington National Cemetery in Speech

President Joe Biden began his address on gun reform Thursday night by recalling the Memorial Day trip he had just taken to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

He stated that upon entering the burial grounds, he and First Lady Jill Biden “saw rows of rows of crosses” and “other emblems of belief”:

On Memorial Day this past Monday, Jill and I visited Arlington National Cemetery. As we entered those hallowed grounds, we saw rows and rows of crosses among the rows of headstones with other emblems of belief honoring those who paid the price on the battlefields around the world.

Undoubtedly, it’s a poignant picture. However, Arlington National Cemetery does not have “crosses” and “other emblems” as headstones. Instead, the headstones are rectangular(ish).

The president’s remark was reminiscent of a line in Dick Cheney’s acceptance speech as the Republican nominee for vice president in 2000.

Cheney used very similar terminology to describe the same nonexistent design of the cemetery’s headstones. He recalled his time as secretary of defense at the Pentagon in Arlington, where he’d chopper in after traveling. In August 2000, he told the Republican National Convention:

And just before you settle down on the landing pad, you look out upon Arlington National Cemetery, its gentle slopes and crosses, row on row. I never once made that trip without being reminded of how enormously fortunate we all are to be Americans.

Biden and Cheney appear to have confused the headstones at Arlington National Cemetery with Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer in Normandy, France. That cemetery memorializes fallen American soldiers in World War II Europe and features mostly cross-shaped headstones, as well as some headstones in the shape of the Star of David.

Biden’s “rows of rows of crosses” and Cheney’s “crosses, row on row” may hearken to an old poem penned by Canadian poet and soldier John McCrae.

During World War I, McCrae wrote In Flanders Fields, which contains the stanza:

In Flanders Fields, the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

Watch above via MSNBC.

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