President Joe Biden's connection to reality and truth has been tenuous at best...for years. His habit of lying about events in his own life — a disastrous kitchen fire, growing up in the Puerto Rican community, starting the civil rights movement at a black church in Delaware, etc. — in order to pander to his audiences has earned him a mountain of Pinocchios from the Washington Post.
Now, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the White House is taking up Biden's habit of telling untruths with a post about MLK. More specifically a bust of the civil rights leader, featured in a post on social media from the White House, that's just another attempt at making stuff up in an attempt to signal virtue and score political points.
"Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bust sits inside the Oval Office — handpicked by President Biden — as a reflection of President Biden's promise to America: to restore the soul of America, to rebuild this country from the bottom up and the middle out, and to unite it," reads the White House's caption on social media outlets including X and Instagram.
There's a problem though. Instead of merely highlighting the bust and acknowledging the holiday, the White House had to make the claim that Biden had "handpicked" the bust to somehow reflect his agenda. That's just not true. Not only has the Biden agenda flopped spectacularly and divided the country, earning the president underwater approval ratings and causing significant pain for Americans, but Biden did not choose the bust for the Oval Office.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s bust sits inside the Oval Office — handpicked by President Biden — as a reflection of President Biden's promise to America: to restore the soul of America, to rebuild this country from the bottom up and the middle out, and to unite it. pic.twitter.com/g1cVzccWb4
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 15, 2024
As the Washington Post reported at the start of Biden's term, "[b]usts of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy flank a fireplace" in Biden's Oval Office. The MLK bust first came to the Oval under President Obama, one that "Trump kept, though he moved it to a different area of the room," WaPo noted in early 2021.
That is, Biden did not — as the White House stated — handpick the bust of MLK (that was Obama) or even decide to return it to the Oval Office (Trump kept it there). The only thing President Biden could truthfully be given credit for is setting it on another table after deciding to remove a bust of Winston Churchill that had been displayed by the George W. Bush and Trump administrations.
So, on the fact-checking front, this White House post earns a "false." Biden didn't handpick the bust of MLK and his White House didn't have to claim that he did. But they did, thinking as always that they'd get away with saying the "right" but false thing.
This isn't the first time the MLK bust was the subject of a falsehood. In 2017, TIME Magazine's White House reporter Zeke Miller sparked a false narrative that Trump had removed the bust after being inaugurated and moving into the Oval Office — only to have the claim fact-checked into oblivion.