by Ben Whedon
President Joe Biden has long had a history of telling bizarre, incomprehensible narratives while attempting to relate to his audiences. He has also, repeatedly, reiterated long-debunked stories such as the nature of his son’s death, his alleged arrest as a civil rights marcher and even his claim to have been a truck driver.
But he and the White House have further taken to regularly misrepresenting statistics when discussing the performance of the U.S. economy, an issue on which he faces considerable scrutiny from the public and scores poorly in many polls.
Between inflation, spending, and other key metrics, the White House has started to take flak while attempting to represent its economic performance more favorably, but Biden’s penchant for dubious statements has prompted even generally sympathetic outlets to push back, and some claims have gone well beyond economic data.
Inflation Was Not at 9 Percent When Biden Took Office
Last week, Biden told CNN that “[n]o president’s had the run we’ve had in terms of creating jobs and bringing down inflation. It was 9 percent when I came to office, 9 percent.”
He later said the same thing to Yahoo Finance on Tuesday, indicating that “inflation has gone slightly up. It was at 9 percent when I came in, and it’s now down around 3 percent.”
In reality, inflation stood at 1.4 percent in January of 2021 and reached a high of 9.1 percent in June of 2022, during Biden’s term.
Biden’s comments drew rebuke and fact checks from several news outlets. Even far-left Snopes rated the claim “False” while normally Biden-friendly CNN observed that “Biden’s claim… is not close to true.”
The Washington Post fact-checker meanwhile, gave Biden “four pinocchios” for the claim, which the Post defines as a “whopper.”
Deficit Reduction
Last year, Biden claimed to have been responsible for the largest reduction of the federal deficit of any president in U.S. history. “I cut the deficit by 1.7 trillion dollars in two years – that’s more than any president on record,” he posted on X at the time.
The post was quickly subjected to a community note, observing that “[t]he $1.7T spending reduction claimed by Biden was the result of pandemic emergency spending that automatically expired, versus action taken by the president.”
Included with the community note were links to fact checks from the Washington Post, Politifact, and factcheck.org.
The Washington Post fact-checker assigned Biden’s claim a “bottomless pinocchio” rating.
Gas at $2.35, Not $5 When He Entered Office
In October of 2022, Biden claimed that he had reduced gas prices from a price of more than $5 across the nation from when he took office.
“The most common price of gas in America is $3.39, down from over five dollars when I took office,” he said at the time. “We need to keep making that progress by having energy companies bring down the cost of a gallon of gas that reflects the cost of paying for a barrel of oil.”
The average regular gas price in January of 2021 stood at $2.334 per gallon. CNN, at the time said the claim “isn’t even close to true.”
Fox Business, moreover, highlighted that AAA data indicated the average price of a gallon of regular gas at the time Biden made the comment was $3.76, significantly higher than Biden claimed.
Biden Suggests His Uncle Was Eaten by Cannibals
Last month, Biden appeared to suggest that his uncle, Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., had been eaten by cannibals after being shot down near New Guinea.
“They never found the body because there used to be — there were a lot of cannibals for real in that part of New Guinea,” he said at the time, according to CBS News.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre quickly corrected the record, telling reporters that “[y]ou saw him respond to all of you when asked about the moment yesterday and his uncle, who lost his life when the military aircraft he was on crashed in the Pacific after taking off near New Guinea,” reported the New York Post.
The remarks drew pushback from the government of Papua New Guinea, with Prime Minister James Marape stating that “President Biden’s remarks may have been a slip of the tongue; however, my country does not deserve to be labeled as such,” according to Time Magazine.
Some remote tribes in New Guinea are known to have practiced cannibalism into the 20th Century.
Biden Claimed to Visit Ground Zero the Day After 9/11
Last year, Biden claimed to have visited the site of the World Trade Center one day after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that brought the complex down.
“Ground Zero in New York – I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building. I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell,” he said at an event in Alaska commemorating the attacks. “It looked so devastating… from where you could stand.”
Biden contradicted himself, claiming that he was in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 12, 2001, in his 2007 book “Promises to Keep,” which stated that he spent the day in D.C.
He did visit Ground Zero in September 2001, however, though a CNN fact check noted that “[h]e actually went to Ground Zero nine days after the attacks.”
Hur Report Finds Biden Did Retain Classified Documents
Earlier this year, special counsel Robert Hur released his reportoutlining Biden’s handling of classified materials in which he wrote that his investigation “uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
“To report that the special counsel ‘found’ or ‘concluded’ willful retention by the president is refuted by the conclusion that charges were not warranted,” Spokesman for the White House Counsel’s office Ian Sams wrote in February. “The special counsel determined that the evidence refuted willful retention or disclosure.”
But in his March testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Hur reiterated that he “obtained evidence President Biden willfully retained classified information.”
Biden, for his part said in a press conference that “I did not share classified information…I did not share it… I guarantee I did not.”
In response to questioning from GOP Rep. Gaetz, Hur stated that Biden’s comments were “inconsistent with the findings based on the evidence in my report.”
Beau “Died in Iraq”
Biden has repeatedly misstated the nature of his son Beau’s death throughout his term, though some have attributed his telling of the narrative to advanced age and confusion rather than a deliberate attempt to misstate.
In May of 2023, he told Marines that “[m]y son was a major in the US Army. We lost him in Iraq.”
Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at Walter Reed National Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. He was 46 at the time.
In October of 2022, he spoke at Camp Hale, saying “Just imagine – and I mean this sincerely. I say this as a father of a man who won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq.”
In November of that year, Biden referred to the “war in Iraq” when discussing the Ukraine conflict and explained the gaffe by saying “I’m thinking about Iraq because that’s where my son died.” Biden’s defenders claim that Beau may have contracted the deadly cancer from being exposed to toxic waste in Iraq, but that has never been established.
In February of this year, moreover, Biden angrily addressed claims in Hur’s report that he had struggled to recall when his son had died. A Washington Post poll published in May of last year said that only 32% believe that Biden has the “mental sharpness it takes to serve effectively as president.”
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Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X.
Photo “President Joe Biden” by President Joe Biden. Background Photo “The White House” by The White House.
