Biden the Liar

In the turbulent season that is election year (or the preceding year) a sharp incline in lies told by politicians can be seen. However, it would appear that at the top of the list of fabricators is indeed Joe Biden. Is it because of his age? Is it because he is desperately trying to pander to the people in an attempt to beat the others? The second seems the most probable seeing that he is a politician, and those breed of people are often unscrupulous and knavish in both their words and deeds. In this article, we will go though some notable lies and fabrications told by the man himself.

"Immediately, that moment *Iraq* started, I came out against the war at that moment."

He said this during an NPR interview last Tuesday. He in fact voted for the authorization of the war, before it began. However, he claimed that after the "shock and awe" bombing was done on Iraq, he had a change of heart.

This is untrue.

In multiple public remarks made after the invasion began in 2003, Biden openly supported the effort. Biden publicly said his vote was a mistake as early as 2005, but not immediately when the war began in 2003.

"Nine months ago, I voted with my colleagues to give the president of the United States of America the authority to use force, and I would vote that way again today," Biden said in a speech at the Brookings Institution on July 31, 2003. "It was a right vote then, and it'll be a correct vote today." It is obvious that he did not "immediately" come out against the war.

Biden has been on a tear, and not in a particularly good way. In August, he said that “Bobby Kennedy and Dr. King had been assassinated in the ’70s, the late ’70s.” Actually, they were assassinated in 1968. In and of itself, it's not a huge problem. And honestly, this isn't a huge lie. But there is a serious problem. A president needs to be accurate. Painstakingly so. Especially in regards to diplomacy and leading a nation, even the slightest numbers matter. He mourned the recent mass shootings in “Houston” and “Michigan” — which in reality took place in El Paso and Dayton. He said that he met with students of the Parkland shootings while he was vice president, but the shootings took place in 2018, long after he ceased being vice president. A few weeks ago, he thought he was in Vermont (“What’s not to like about Vermont?”)  when, in fact, he was standing in the critical early-primary state of New Hampshire.

The pinnacle all the Biden slip-ups (thus far) happened on Aug. 21, in a New Hampshire meeting hall, when he recalled how he had journeyed to Afghanistan and pinned a medal on a Navy captain who had rappelled down a ravine to fetch the body of comrade killed in combat. The Navy captain had risen back up the ravine, carrying the body on his back. The captain said he didn’t deserve the medal, telling Biden: “Do not pin it on me, sir!” Recalling this story, Biden told his New Hampshire audience: “This is the God’s honest truth. My word as a Biden.”

Well, some fact-checking reporters scrutinized “God’s honest truth,” and here’s what they found: “(A)lmost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect. Based on interviews with more than a dozen U.S. troops, their commanders and Biden campaign officials, it appears as though the former vice president has jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened … In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony.”

Biden has long told variations of this story to a number of audiences. Sometimes it’s a Navy captain (according to military records, that character is fictitious), sometimes it’s an Army captain (according to military records, ditto), and sometimes the heroic action took place in Iraq, not Afghanistan. Sometimes the dead soldier was pulled from a ravine, sometimes from a Humvee. The truth (which should be enough) is that, in 2011, Biden did pin a medal on an Army staff sergeant who’d tried without success to rescue a dead comrade from a burning vehicle in Afghanistan — and who had indeed told Biden that he didn’t deserve the medal. And yet, after The Washington Post parsed his erroneous story-telling, he didn’t seem to understand the problem: “I was making the point how courageous these people are … What is it that I said wrong?”

The lesson, perhaps, is that the veracity factor is only one of many. If voters like a politician, they’ll give that person plenty of slack despite his lies. Trump’s cultists prove the point in the extreme, but it’s not a new phenomenon. Voters elected Ronald Reagan twice despite his frequent flights of imagination. (Random example: Reagan said that, as a member of the U.S. Army film corps, that he personally shot footage of Nazi concentration camps as they were being liberated. In truth, he never left Hollywood.) Context is everything. If Biden can convince enough people that he’s a comfortable soft landing after four dire years of Trump turbulence, his blarney won’t be a deal-breaker.