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President Biden falsely claimed earlier this week that he was the “first” individual in his household to “go to school,” persevering with a decades-long behavior of constructing false or embellished claims about his life.
Biden has been scrutinized a number of instances over time for fabricating tales, together with claiming to have been arrested in apartheid-era South Africa, being in a helicopter that was “pressured down” by Al-Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan, and even trivial occasions involving an Amtrak conductor who had handed away earlier than his alleged story befell.
Biden continued the pattern on Monday whereas talking within the battleground state of Wisconsin as he outlined his plan to offer “life-changing” reduction to pupil mortgage debt.
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President Biden has a historical past of exaggerated tales about his life and profession. (Fox Information)
“I, like an terrible lot of individuals on this viewers, was the primary in my household to go to school and watched by dad struggled to assist me get there,” Biden instructed the gang.
Nevertheless, lower than two years in the past, throughout a speech in Pennsylvania, Biden instructed an viewers that his grandfather performed school soccer.
“My grandfather Finnegan from Scranton would actually be pleased with me proper now,’ Biden mentioned in Pittsburgh in October 2022. “No, I am not joking. He would. By the best way, he was an All-American soccer participant [inaudible] in Santa Clara.”
When requested about his current feedback and his elaborations all through the years, White Home deputy press secretary Andrew Bates instructed Fox Information Digital that President Biden “is proud to have restored honesty, integrity, and respect for the rule of regulation to the Oval Workplace.”
He added that Biden can also be proud “to be the primary Biden to graduate school.”
Biden’s exaggerations relating to schools additionally prolong to a earlier declare that he taught “political principle” on the College of Pennsylvania, which he talked about in Maryland in September 2023.
“Democracy is at stake, people. Our democracy is below assault. And we gotta combat for it,” Biden mentioned. “I taught on the College of Pennsylvania for 4 years. And I used to show political principle. And people, you all the time hear each era has to combat for democracy. And I discovered myself – it is computerized, we did not should consider it – however we do. We do.”
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Truth Checkers have hit Biden over his tales up to now. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg through Getty)
There’s little to no proof that Biden ever taught “political principle” on the College of Pennsylvania. Whereas the college’s web site notes that the president was the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Professor of Follow from 2017 to 2021, a Snopes.com fact-check on his earlier however comparable declare – that he was a “full professor on the College of Pennsylvania” for 4 years – discovered that “he didn’t educate a semester’s price of programs” whereas on this position.
Snopes famous that this “position was honorary” and that he “gave lectures and talks to college students on campus however didn’t educate a full semester’s course load throughout that point.”
Years earlier than, when he ran for president in 1987, Biden exaggerated his educational report by bragging that he graduated “within the high half” of his class whereas berating a reporter on the marketing campaign path.
“I feel I’ve a a lot increased I.Q. than you do, I believe,” Biden instructed the reporter in New Hampshire on the time. “I went to regulation college on a full educational scholarship, the one one in my class to have a full educational scholarship.”
“Within the first yr of regulation college, I made a decision I did not need to be in regulation college and ended up within the backside two-thirds of my class,” he mentioned. “After which I made a decision to remain, went again to regulation college, and in reality ended up within the high half of my class.”
He later admitted that he graduated 76th in a category of 85.
“I didn’t graduate within the high half of my class at regulation college, and my recollection of this was inaccurate,” he instructed the New York Instances.
“I graduated from the College of Delaware with a double main in historical past and political science,” he mentioned. “My reference to levels on the Claremont occasion was supposed to refer to those majors -—I mentioned ‘three’ and may have mentioned ‘two.'”
The outlet identified that Biden obtained a single B.A. diploma in historical past and political science.
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Biden’s tall tales date again many years. (Getty Photos)
Since then, Biden has instructed quite a few tales which have additionally been deemed exaggerations. Mainstream shops, together with the Washington Submit, have even referred to as him out on them, together with the publication’s high fact-checker Glenn Kessler.
In September 2023, Kessler penned an article about how “Biden likes to retell sure tales” and the way some lack credibility. His report assembled a number of of Biden’s accounts, together with one about an Amtrak conductor he claimed hailed him on having traveled greater than two million miles on the railroad, exceeding the 1.2 million miles traveled on Air Power planes as vp as of 2016.
Nevertheless, the conductor retired in 1993 and handed away two years earlier than Biden reached that milestone within the air.
Different tales Kessler addressed embrace Biden’s declare that he and his father noticed two males in fits kissing one another in public when he was a youngster, that he was arrested for making an attempt to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and the way, as vp, he organized for his uncle to be introduced a Purple Coronary heart that he was owed and by no means obtained, besides the uncle died in 1999, lengthy earlier than Biden was vp.
Biden has additionally been repeatedly referred to as out for his claims of being very shut with Somali cab drivers in Wilmington, Delaware.
“Somalis have made my metropolis of Wilmington, Del. (their residence) on a smaller scale. There’s a very identifiable Somali group,” then-Vice President Biden mentioned. “I’d add in case you come to the prepare station with me you’ll discover I’ve nice relationships with them as a result of there’s an terrible lot driving cabs and are pals of mine. For actual. I’m not being solicitous. I’m being critical.”
US President Joe Biden and US First Woman Jill Biden put on Hawaiian leis as they stroll to board Air Power One earlier than departing Kahului Airport in Kahului, Hawaii, on August 21, 2023. The Bidens spent the day assembly with first responders, survivors, and native officers following lethal wildfires in Maui. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP through Getty Photos)
Politifact, a liberal reality checking web site, rated the assertion as “Pants on hearth” and mentioned the assertion “set eyerolls rolling.” Different shops additionally lined the declare and dismissed it as “unusual” and “insensitive.”
Biden additionally repeated a false declare final yr about his home burning all the way down to attempt to relate to those that misplaced their homes from the wildfires ravaging Maui.
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“I don’t need to evaluate difficulties, however we’ve a bit of sense, Jill and I, of what it was wish to lose a house,” Biden mentioned. “Years in the past, now, 15 years, I used to be in Washington doing ‘Meet the Press’… Lightning struck at residence on a bit of lake exterior the house, not a lake a giant pond. It hit the wire and got here up beneath our residence, into the… air situation ducts.
“To make an extended story quick, I virtually misplaced my spouse, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat,” the president added.
A 2004 report from the Related Press, archived by LexisNexis, mentioned lightning struck the Bidens’ residence and began a “small hearth that was contained to the kitchen.” The report mentioned firefighters bought the blaze below management in 20 minutes and that they have been in a position to maintain the flames from spreading past the kitchen.
Fox Information Digital’s Jessica Chasmar, Gabriel Hayes, Joseph A. Wulfsohn, and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
Joe Schoffstall is a politics producer/reporter for Fox Information Digital. Story suggestions will be despatched to [email protected] and on Twitter: @joeschoffstall
