According to the NY Post, President Joe Biden once again falsely described the circumstances behind his son Beau’s death, claiming that his firstborn died during the Iraq war when in fact the 46-year-old succumbed to brain cancer in 2015 at the Walter Reed military hospital in Bethesda, Maryland.

Biden has said in the past that he decided not to run for president in 2016 because of Beau’s passing.

While Beau’s death certainly must have been traumatic for Biden—he’d already lost a daughter and wife in a 1972 car accident that left sons Beau and Hunter injured—it does not excuse Joe’s continued mangling of the truth. The Post reports the president made an informal visit with US Marines at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan last Thursday and flatly said something that was not true:

My son was a major in the US Army. We lost him in Iraq.

The outlet was able to obtain a video of the moment. Watch:

As the newspaper noted, the misinformation might have gone unreported because “the White House press office did not put out an official transcript, almost allowing the error to escape public notice.” Meanwhile, reporters were kept far enough away that they couldn’t hear his tall tales.

It’s far from the first time that Biden has made this jarring claim. As RedState‘s Bonchie reported, the befuddled leader of the free world made a similar comment in October 2022 when he was delivering a speech at an event concerning national monuments. Beau “lost his life in Iraq,” he said.

Just imagine — I mean it sincerely, I say this as a father of a man who won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq — Imagine the courage, the daring, and the genuine sacrifice, genuine sacrifice they all made.

President @JoeBiden incorrectly said his late son Beau "lost his life in Iraq." https://t.co/oZ9GRyRjcI pic.twitter.com/8OvjbQgUaT

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) October 12, 2022

In November of 2022, he doubled down, claiming during a speech in South Florida regarding inflation that “I’m thinking about Iraq because that’s where my son died.” Later during the event he correctly stated the cause of death, cancer, but appeared to blame toxic burn pits that Beau may have been exposed to during his Iraq service for the disease.

There are two explanations for the president’s repeated use of false information. One is that he is so addled and dementia-ridden that he really does get confused by the facts around pivotal events in his family’s life. If this is the case, then the man has no business being president of the United States. We cannot hand the keys to the nuclear codes to a man who cannot recall how his beloved son died.

A second explanation is that he is aware that he is not telling the truth—but can’t stop himself. He knows people will sympathize with him, and as we know, a newsworthy moment gets headline treatment, but a correction gets buried on page 16. If you repeat something often enough, a certain amount of people will believe it regardless of its veracity. Could he be that Machiavellian?

If there is one thing I sympathize about with Joe Biden, it’s that he lost a wife, a daughter, and a son to untimely deaths. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, and can’t imagine the pain.

That being said, his repeated use of this fable about Beau’s death is deeply problematic because either he’s so calculating that he’s willing to use his late son as a political weapon, or he’s too senile to know basic facts—in which case he is clearly unfit for the presidency.