President Biden falsely claimed earlier this week that he was the “first person in his family to go to college,” continuing a decades-long habit of making false or embellished claims about his life. There is.
Biden has claimed to have been arrested in apartheid-era South Africa, claimed to have been on a helicopter that was “forced down” by al-Qaeda rebels in Afghanistan, and even fabricated minor incidents involving terrorists. As such, it has been scrutinized many times over the years. Amtrak conductor who died before the alleged story happened.
Biden continued that trend Monday, speaking in the battleground state of Wisconsin and outlining a plan to provide “life-changing” relief for student loan debt.
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President Biden has a history of exaggerated stories about his life and career. (Fox News)
“Like many people in this audience, I was the first in my family to go to college and watched my father struggle to get there,” Biden told the audience.
But less than two years ago, during a speech in Pennsylvania, Biden told the audience that his grandfather had played college football.
“My grandfather Finnegan from Scranton would be really proud of me right now,” Biden said in Pittsburgh in October 2022. He would do that.By the way, he was an American football player. [inaudible] In Santa Clara. ”
White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates, asked about his recent comments and his years of whitewashing, told Fox News Digital that President Biden has “integrity, integrity and respect for the rule of law in the Oval Office.” I’m proud to have brought it back.”
He added that Biden was proud to be “the first Biden to graduate from college.”
Biden’s hyperbole about universities extends to his previous claim that he taught “political theory” at the University of Pennsylvania, which he mentioned in Maryland in September 2023.
“Democracy is at stake. Our democracy is under attack and we must fight for it,” Biden said. “I was teaching at the University of Pennsylvania for four years, and I was teaching political theory, and you guys always hear that every generation has to fight for democracy. And I found myself… We did – it happened automatically, we didn’t have to believe it – but we do it, we do it.”
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Fact-checkers have criticized Biden over his past stories. (Jacqueline Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty)
There is little evidence that Biden ever taught “political theory” at the University of Pennsylvania. The university’s website states that the president served as the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Professor of Practice from 2017 to 2021, but his previous similar claims by Snopes.com, that he was a four-year A fact check says he was a “full professor at the University of Pennsylvania.” year – it turns out that “he hasn’t taught a semester’s worth of courses” while in this role.
Snopes said the role was “honorable” and that he “gave lectures and lectures to students on campus, but did not teach an entire semester’s worth of coursework during that time.”
Years earlier, when he ran for president in 1987, Biden exaggerated his educational background by boasting that he graduated in the “top half” of his class while berating reporters on the campaign trail.
“I think my IQ is much higher than yours,” Biden told reporters in New Hampshire at the time. “I went to law school on a full scholarship. I was the only one in my class with a full scholarship.”
“During my first year of law school, I decided I didn’t want to go to law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class,” he said. “And I decided to stay and went back to law school and actually ended up in the top half of my class.”
He later admitted that he graduated 76th out of a class of 85 students.
“I didn’t graduate law school in the top half of my class, and my memory was inaccurate,” he told the New York Times.
“I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science,” he said. “My reference to degrees at the Claremont event was intended to refer to these majors. I said ‘three,’ but I should have said ‘two.'”
The newspaper noted that Biden has one bachelor’s degree in history and one in political science.
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Biden’s epic story goes back decades. (Getty Images)
Since then, Biden has told a number of stories that are considered exaggerations. Mainstream media outlets such as the Washington Post have criticized him, including the paper’s top fact-checker, Glenn Kessler.
In September 2023, Kessler wrote an article about how “Biden loves to repeat certain stories” and how some of them lack credibility. His report summarizes several of Biden’s testimonies, including that as vice president he traveled more than 1.2 million miles on Air Force planes and more than 2 million miles by rail as of 2016. This includes one involving an Amtrak conductor who he claimed did.
But the conductor retired in 1993 and died two years before Biden reached that milestone.
Other stories brought up by Kessler include Biden’s claim that when he was a teenager, he and his father witnessed two men in suits kissing in public; This includes how he was arrested while trying to meet Nelson Mandela, and how he arrested Biden as vice president. He arranged to present his uncle with the Purple Heart he was owed but never received, except that his uncle died in 1999, long before Biden became vice president.
Biden has also been repeatedly criticized for claiming to have a very close relationship with a Somali taxi driver in Wilmington, Delaware.
“Somalis have dwarfed my city, Wilmington, Delaware (home town). We have a very identifiable Somali community,” then-Vice President Biden said. “If you come to the station with me, you might notice that I have a great relationship with them, because a lot of the taxi drivers are my friends. It’s true. I’m not trying to be nice. I’m being serious.” ”
U.S. President Joe Biden and U.S. First Lady Jill Biden wear Hawaiian leis as they walk to board Air Force One before departing from Kahului Airport in Kahului, Hawaii, August 21, 2023. There is. The Bidens spent the day meeting with first responders, survivors and local residents. Officials spoke after deadly wildfires broke out on Maui. (Mandel Gann/AFP via Getty Images)
PolitiFact, a liberal fact-checking website; rated the statement Describing it as “my pants on fire”, he said the statement was “eye-rolling”. Other news outlets also picked up the claim, dismissing it as “bizarre” and “insensitive.”
Mr. Biden tried to build relationships with people who lost their homes in the wildfires that tore through Maui last year, repeating false claims that their homes burned down.
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“I don’t want to compare hardships, but Jill and I both understand a little bit of what it’s like to lose your home,” Biden said. “Years ago, 15 years ago now, I was doing a ‘press conference’ in Washington… Lightning struck not a large pond, but a small lake outside my house. The lightning struck a power line and It fell straight down…into the air conditioner duct.
“Long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat,” the president added.
According to a 2004 Associated Press report archived by LexisNexis, the Bidens’ home was struck by lightning, causing “a small fire that was contained to the kitchen.” Firefighters were able to bring the fire under control within 20 minutes and prevent the flames from spreading beyond the kitchen, the report said.
Fox News Digital’s Jessica Chasmar, Gabriel Hayes, Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
