Former vice president Joe Biden — who’s plunging in the polls — suddenly remembers a incident that just happens to be one that might help him with black voters.

“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 New York Times reported.

“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.

TRENDING: Crowd Begins Chanting "Fill The Seat" at Trump Rally in North Carolina - President Trump Announces He Will Name Nominee this Week - A WOMAN

Weirdly, though, Biden never mentioned the arrest in his memoir — and he’s never mentioned it on the campaign trail until now, a week before the vote in South Carolina, where blacks will play a large role in picking the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee.

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 embellishes the story each time he tells it. on 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.’”

Huh. Who’s the “lying dog-faced pony soldier” now?