I can’t promise it will be an interesting read, but it will be a long one. It will feature, in vivid detail, an annotated version of the still-growing list of lies Joe Biden has told, many since becoming president, about places he’s been and things he or his family have done.
The highlights will include his claims that he “used to drive an 18-wheeler,” that his great-grandfather was a coal miner, that he was arrested in South Africa while trying to visit Nelson Mandela in prison, and that he was “shot at” over seas. (He continued to promote the last claim even after he himself walked it back.)
Biden’s latest addition to the book came this recently as last Tuesday during a virtual phone call to rabbis over the upcoming Jewish High Holidays. At one point in his mental meanderings, he said this (according to a White House transcript of his remarks):
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
I used to think coming out of the Civil Rights Movement and being involved in the Jewish community as a kid, and the Civil Rights Movement — in Delaware — I used to think that hate could be defeated, it could be wiped out. But I learned a long time ago, it can’t. It only hides. It hides. It hides under the rocks. And given any oxygen at all, it comes out. It’s a minority view, but it comes out and it comes out raging.
And it’s been given too much oxygen in the last 4, 5, 7, 10 years, and it has seen itself, whether it was — I remember spending time at the — you know, going to the — you know, the Tree of Life Synagogue, speaking with the — just — it just is amazing these things are happening — happening in America. [Emphasis added]
The highlighted phrase is a reference to the synagogue in Pittsburgh where a lone shooter murdered 11 worshippers in 2018. There was some discussion at the time over whether Donald Trump, who was president at the time, was welcome to visit, but a visit by Joe Biden was never discussed. In any event, he wasn’t there, as even CNN confirms.
I’ve wondered from time to time what impels Biden to lie so much. Obviously sometimes it’s to score political points, but I think on a fair number of occasions his invention of “facts” about himself arises out a desire to hear himself talk. That certainly seems to be the case in this spiel from the same event.
