Biden’s bogus college claim is just latest in decades-long pattern of embellishment

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President Biden falsely claimed earlier this week that he was the “first” individual in his household to “go to college,” persevering with a decades-long behavior of making false or embellished claims about his life.

Biden has been scrutinized a number of instances through the years for fabricating tales, together with claiming to have been arrested in apartheid-era South Africa, being in a helicopter that was “forced 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 development on Monday whereas talking in the battleground state of Wisconsin as he outlined his plan to supply “life-changing” aid to scholar mortgage debt. 

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President Biden at COP26

President Biden has a historical past of exaggerated tales about his life and profession. (Fox News)

“I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college and watched by dad struggled to help me get there,” Biden instructed the group.

However, lower than two years in the past, throughout a speech in Pennsylvania, Biden instructed an viewers that his grandfather performed college soccer.

“My grandfather Finnegan from Scranton would really be proud of me right now,’ Biden said in Pittsburgh in October 2022. “No, I’m not joking. He would. By the way in which, he was an All-American soccer participant [inaudible] in Santa Clara.”

When asked about his recent comments and his embellishments throughout the years, White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital that President Biden “is proud to have restored honesty, integrity, and respect for the rule of legislation to the Oval Office.”

He added that Biden is also proud “to be the primary Biden to graduate college.” 

Biden’s exaggerations concerning schools additionally lengthen to a earlier claim that he taught “political idea” at the University of Pennsylvania, which he mentioned in Maryland in September 2023.

“Democracy is at stake, people. Our democracy is below assault. And we gotta struggle for it,” Biden said. “I taught on the University of Pennsylvania for 4 years. And I used to show political idea. And people, you at all times hear each technology has to struggle for democracy. And I discovered myself – it is automated, we did not need to consider it – however we do. We do.”

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President Biden in profile shot looking to right

Fact Checkers have hit Biden over his stories in the past. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP/Bloomberg via Getty)

There is little to no evidence that Biden ever taught “political idea” at the University of Pennsylvania. While the university’s website notes that the president was the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Professor of Practice from 2017 to 2021, a Snopes.com fact-check on his previous but similar claim – that he was a “full professor on the University of Pennsylvania” for four years – found that “he didn’t educate a semester’s value of programs” while in this role. 

Snopes noted that this “function 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 tutorial document by bragging that he graduated “in the highest half” of his class while berating a reporter on the campaign trail. 

“I believe I’ve a a lot increased I.Q. than you do, I believe,” Biden told the reporter in New Hampshire at the time. “I went to legislation college on a full tutorial scholarship, the one one in my class to have a full tutorial scholarship.”

“In the primary yr of legislation college, I made a decision I did not wish to be in legislation college and ended up in the underside two-thirds of my class,” he said. “And then I made a decision to remain, went again to legislation college, and in reality ended up in the highest half of my class.”

He later admitted that he graduated 76th in a class of 85. 

“I didn’t graduate in the highest half of my class at legislation college, and my recollection of this was inaccurate,” he told the New York Times.

“I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double main in historical past and political science,” he said. “My reference to levels on the Claremont occasion was meant 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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A seated President Biden tugs at his collar

Biden’s tall tales date back decades. (Getty Images)

Since then, Biden has told numerous stories that have also been deemed exaggerations. Mainstream outlets, including the Washington Post, have even called him out on them, including the publication’s top fact-checker Glenn Kessler. 

In September 2023, Kessler penned an article about how “Biden likes to retell sure tales” and how some lack credibility. His report assembled several of Biden’s accounts, including one about an Amtrak conductor he claimed hailed him on having traveled more than two million miles on the railroad, exceeding the 1.2 million miles traveled on Air Force planes as vice president as of 2016. 

However, the conductor retired in 1993 and passed away two years before Biden reached that milestone in the air. 

Other stories Kessler addressed include Biden’s claim that he and his father saw two men in suits kissing each other in public when he was a teenager, that he was arrested for trying to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and how, as vice president, he arranged for his uncle to be presented a Purple Heart that he was owed and never received, except the uncle died in 1999, long before Biden was vice president. 

Biden has also been repeatedly called out for his claims of being very close with Somali cab drivers in Wilmington, Delaware.

“Somalis have made my metropolis of Wilmington, Del. (their house) on a smaller scale. There is a really identifiable Somali group,” then-Vice President Biden said. “I’d add in the event you come to the practice 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 severe.” 

President Biden, left, holding hands with Jill Biden

US President Joe Biden and US First Lady Jill Biden wear Hawaiian leis as they walk to board Air Force One before departing Kahului Airport in Kahului, Hawaii, on August 21, 2023. The Bidens spent the day meeting with first responders, survivors, and local officials following deadly wildfires in Maui.  (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

Politifact, a liberal fact checking website, rated the statement as “Pants on hearth” and said the statement “set eyerolls rolling.” Other outlets also covered the claim and dismissed it as “unusual” and “insensitive.”

Biden also repeated a false claim last year about his house burning down to try to relate to those who lost their houses from the wildfires ravaging Maui.

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“I don’t wish to evaluate difficulties, however we now have a bit of sense, Jill and I, of what it was prefer to lose a house,” Biden said. “Years in the past, now, 15 years, I used to be in Washington doing ‘Meet the Press’… Lightning struck at house on a bit of lake outdoors the house, not a lake a giant pond. It hit the wire and got here up beneath our house, into the… air situation ducts.

“To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat,” the president added.

A 2004 report from the Associated Press, archived by LexisNexis, mentioned lightning struck the Bidens’ house and began a “small fire that was contained to the kitchen.” The report mentioned firefighters acquired the blaze below management in 20 minutes and that they had been capable of maintain the flames from spreading past the kitchen.

Fox News Digital’s Jessica Chasmar, Gabriel Hayes, Joseph A. Wulfsohn, and Greg Wehner contributed to this report.



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