President Biden is a man not known for eloquent speeches or truthful anecdotes. There's his yarn about Corn Pop (a bad dude), his Amtrak conductor, his time as a semi-truck driver, the list goes on and on. The "Great Communicator," Biden's not.
In his widely panned speech in Georgia this week — the one Stacey Abrams couldn't be bothered to attend, was smacked down by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and served as a "break point" in Biden's less than year-old administration — Biden trotted out another of his tall tales. And it's a doozy.
The Washington Post's fact checker Glenn Kessler, seemingly growing tired of Biden's baseless claims, headlined a piece published Thursday "Biden claims yet another arrest for which there’s little evidence." Yes, another.
Knew the second he said this that it was a lie.
— Katie Pavlich (@KatiePavlich) January 13, 2022
Biden claims yet another arrest for which there’s little evidence https://t.co/FqeqosQQhb
Apart from being a blunder of a political move that Biden and his handlers apparently didn't predict, Biden's speech at the Atlanta University Center Consortium included a supposedly inspirational bit about the time Biden was allegedly arrested while making a stand for civil rights:
I did not walk in the shoes of generations of students who walked these grounds. But I walked other grounds. Because I’m so damn old, I was there as well. You think I’m kidding, man. It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested.
The first time? How often was a much-younger Biden arrested? Apparently we'll never know, "man." The line came after Biden invoked the spirit and legacy of Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, among other civil rights leaders. Does he view his claimed arrest as being equal to the world-changing work of Tubman and Douglass? Biden — who campaigned for Ralph Northam — is barely worthy of invoking these two heroes of American history who escaped slavery to dedicate themselves not to comfortable lives but to risk their lives to bring America closer to its founding goals of life and liberty for all.
As WaPo's Kessler points out, Biden's latest dubious claim isn't his first about being arrested that turned out to be unsubstantiated:
Previously, he has said he was arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa (Four Pinocchios false) and for trying to enter an all-female dorm room at Ohio University (Partly False, according to USA Today). He has also suggested he was arrested for wandering onto the Senate floor as a “star-struck kid,” but most times he has indicated he was just given a warning.
It's something like the new kid in school trying to fit in and become the leader of the pack by making up stories of his reckless behavior at a previous school. Frankly, it's pathetic. But that hasn't stopped Biden from telling the same story about being arrested "at least five" times before, according to Kessler:
In three cases, Biden asserts he was arrested for standing on the porch with the Black couple who were subject to demonstrations. On the face of it, that doesn’t make much sense. After all, what would be the charge?
In two versions, Biden says the police merely brought him back home from the protest after he stood on the porch. That makes a little more sense, though it’s unclear why police would take the time if they had their hands full with a protest. In any case, this means there would be no arrest record.
Twice, Biden says he was 14 years old, once he says he was 13 and another time he says he was 15.
Not only can Biden not get the story at issue straight, even Kessler and WaPo couldn't find enough evidence to lend credence to the narrative and "The White House did not respond to a request for comment." Maybe Psaki will circle back?
Kessler's "Pinocchio Test" didn't contain his lack of enthusiasm for having to check Biden again. "The primary source for this story is Biden — and we’ve learned over the years that he is not always a reliable source," Kessler writes. "He appears to be citing his mother to enhance his civil rights credentials — which we have noted he has exaggerated before — but too many elements do not add up to give this “arrest” more credibility than his previous claims of getting in trouble with the law." WaPo is apparently tired of Biden's factually challenged anecdotes, but keeps checking them because they know Biden is "not always a reliable source" and has a track record of exaggerating his civil rights activism to make himself seem like a committed ally. Put more simply, Biden lies to pander to black voters.
For his shameless manufacturing of a story to prop himself up while comparing roughly half the country to the president of the confederacy, "the president earns Four Pinocchios" from The Washington Post. But it's unlikely to be picked up by others in the mainstream media, discussed on cable news, or raised by liberal reporters in the White House briefing room. And so Biden will continue to pander with his phony tales of heroism even as his support among the public continues to crater.