The New York Post reports that Biden made a false claim at the Naval Academy, about supposedly being appointed to the Naval Academy in 1965:
President Biden told graduating midshipmen at the Naval Academy Friday that he applied to the school in 1965 — but a quick check of his biography shows problems with the story.
Biden said he applied to Annapolis with a letter from then-Delaware Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, but the year he cited — 1965 — is the same year he graduated from the University of Delaware. The academy doesn’t offer graduate degrees.
“I was told the Class of ’72 is here. I was appointed to the academy in 1965 by a senator…”
The US military was heavily involved in the Vietnam War by the mid-1960s and had Biden attended the academy, he would have had to serve in the Navy upon graduation.
Biden received five student draft deferments during his four years at the University of Delaware and subsequent three years at Syracuse University College of Law.
After Biden graduated law school in 1968, he reportedly was deemed unfit for military service by citing childhood asthma. His memoir doesn’t mention the condition while describing his football exploits or his work as a lifeguard. A report released in November by his doctor also doesn’t mention asthma.
As The Post notes, “Biden has a habit of … making false or exaggerated claims.” Last year, Biden told Jewish leaders that he remembered “spending time at” and “going to” the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh after the mass murder of 11 people in 2018. But he never visited the synagogue.
In September, Biden falsely told people in Idaho that he received his “first job offer” from a local business, Boise Cascade. This was contradicted by the company, and Biden had never described any interest in moving to Idaho.
This January, Biden told students of historically black colleges in Atlanta that he was arrested while engaging in a civil rights protest — which again was not true.
In his most famous misstatement, Biden in 2020 claimed he “had the great honor of being arrested” in South Africa when he was “trying to get to see [Nelson Mandela] on Robbens [sic] Island,” where Mandela was imprisoned until 1990. He claimed Mandela thanked him for it. Later, Biden admitted that was not true.
Biden has a long record of dishonesty. As The Post notes, “Biden dropped out of his first presidential campaign in 1988 due to a scandal involving plagiarism of speeches and a law school paper and controversy about claims he made about his academic record.”
Biden also regularly gets facts wrong, even when he is not being dishonest. He erroneously claimed that January 6 rioters killed two police officers, in a recent speech at his alma mater, the University of Delaware. In an earlier speech, he incorrectly claimed they killed five police officers. No police officers died during the riot, and one who died the following day was later found to have died of natural causes.
