DID SANTOS TAKE CUES FROM BIDEN ON MAKING UP HIS PAST?
WASHINGTON — New York Republican George Santos is a fabulist who lied to voters about his family, education and achievements. Incoming House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) said in a statement that Santos’s many lies make him “woefully unqualified” and “clearly unfit to serve” in Congress. He’s right.
So, what about Joe Biden?
When it comes to making up self-serving, politically advantageous details about his past, Santos seems to have taken a page from our fabulist in chief. Let’s review the record:
During the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, it emerged that Biden had plagiarized a speech by British Labour leader Neil Kinnock, adopting Kinnock’s family history as his own. “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?” Biden asked. “… My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?”
Not only were many of the words stolen, so were the facts: Biden was not the first in his family to go to college (only the first on his father’s side), and his ancestors had not been coal miners.
Biden has also made numerous false assertions about his educational achievements. He claimed in 1987 he had “graduated with three degrees from college,” had received an award as “the outstanding student in the political science department,” finished in the “top half” of his class at law school and received a “full academic scholarship.” None of that was true.
He has also falsely claimed to have been arrested multiple times for taking righteous stands. During his 2020 campaign, Biden repeatedly claimed he was arrested in South Africa trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison, adding that Mandela thanked him for it. None of it was true.
Biden also claimed during a speech in Atlanta he had been arrested while protesting for civil rights. According to The New York Times, “There is no evidence he was ever arrested during a civil-rights protest.” He has also falsely claimed to have been arrested as a college student for sneaking into the U.S. Capitol.
He has also lied about his experience in war zones. In 2021, Biden told State Department employees that he was “shot at” overseas. In 2019, he told a detailed story about brushing off warnings of danger, when he was vice president, to pin a Silver Star on a Navy captain in Afghanistan.
The Post reported that “almost every detail in the story appears to be incorrect.” It was President Barack Obama, not Biden, who gave him the award; it was the Medal of Honor, not the Silver Star; and the ceremony took place at the White House.
Biden has lied about consoling victims of tragedy. He claimed, for example, he met in Washington with survivors of a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., while he was vice president, though the shooting took place in 2018, after he left office.
He has lied about his relationships with foreign leaders. In 2020, he claimed that he had gotten China to join the 2016 Paris climate accord “after meeting with Deng Xiaoping,” who died in 1997. And he has claimed more than 20 times that he had traveled 17,000 miles with Chinese President Xi Jinping — earning Biden a “Bottomless Pinocchio” from The Post.
And, of course, Biden lies constantly about his record as president. He falsely claimed to have passed his student loan forgiveness “by a vote or two.” (Congress never voted on it.) He has repeatedly falsely claimed that “real incomes are up” (they’ve suffered the largest decline in four decades); that his Inflation Reduction Act will reduce inflation (it will not); and that none of his military commanders advised him to leave a residual force in Afghanistan (they did).
Biden’s career has been a constant stream of untruths. Yet no Democratic Party leaders have suggested that Biden is “unfit to serve.” Maybe Santos should switch parties and run for president — then all would be forgiven.