Six Most Misleading Claims from Joe Biden

Former vice president and 2020 Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden has misled the public on multiple occasions throughout his career.

According to The Quotable Joe: Corn Pop, Dog-Faced Pony Soldiers, and Other Malarkey from America’s Most Embarrassing Candidate, there are at least six times when he outright misled the public with his false claims:

1. Biden Falsely Claimed He Marched in the Civil Rights Movement in 1987

Biden was campaigning for the Democrat nomination for president in 1987 when he claimed he marched in the civil rights movement.

“When I marched in the civil rights movement, I did not march with a 12-point program,” Biden said in New Hampshire in February 1987, according to the New York Times. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes. And we changed attitudes.”

His advisers had to gently remind him that he did not march with civil rights activists, but Biden kept telling the story anyway.

2. Biden Falsely Claimed He Saved Millions of Lives from Ebola

At the February 2020 Democrat primary debate in South Carolina, Biden claimed his efforts “played a role” in saving “millions of lives” throughout the Ebola epidemic that took place under the Obama administration.

“What we did with Ebola—I was part of making sure that pandemic did not get to the United States, saved millions of
lives. And what we did, we set up, I helped set up that office in the presidency, in the president’s office, on diseases that are pandemic diseases,” Biden said.

“We increased the budget of the CDC. We increased the NIH budget. We should—and our president today—and he’s wiped all that out. We did it. We stopped it,” he continued.

But the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) statistics show that the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic centered in Africa, infecting 28,600 people and killing 11,325 people on that continent alone.

Biden also repeatedly referred to Ebola as a “pandemic,” which means a disease that has spread worldwide, instead of an “epidemic,” wherein the spread of disease is more localized.

3. Biden Falsely Claimed He Created “Shovel-Ready Jobs”

Biden delivered a speech in July 2020 in New Castle, Delaware, when he reminded everyone about how he was tasked with being in charge of the 2009 “stimulus,” also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The stimulus turned out to be a failure, costing the U.S. $862 million to state and local governments and Democrat special interests. But Biden talked about his record in a positive light. Biden said:

When we usually talk about jobs packages, there’s a big push on ‘shovel-ready jobs. I’m the guy, as you may remember [who] managed the Recovery Act of 800-plus billion dollars. I always focused on ‘shovel-ready jobs,’ what we could do immediately, to get the money out in communities.

In October 2010, former President Barack Obama said there was “no such thing” as shovel-ready jobs “when it comes to public works,” the New York Times reported.

4. Biden Falsely Claimed He Defeated ISIS

Biden claimed in January 2020 during a presidential primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa, that he, along with the rest of the Obama administration, defeated the Islamic State (ISIS). However, the terrorist group, which was founded in 1999, did not rise to prominence until the 2010s.

“I was part of the coalition that put together 68 counties to deal with stateless terror as well as failed states. Not us alone, 68 other countries, that’s how we were able to defeat and end the caliphate [of ] ISIS,” Biden said of his work during the Obama administration.

Despite Biden’s claim, the Obama administration was inefficient at fighting the terror group. It was only in 2017, after President Donald Trump took office, that ISIS began to lose territory and fighters.

5. Biden Falsely Claimed over 120 Million Dead from the Coronavirus

Biden claimed that the coronavirus killed 120 million people in a July 2020 speech on health care in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, just moments before his livestream went dead.

“You have, unnecessarily, now we have over 120 million dead from COVID,” Biden said, right as the live stream appeared to go under. The U.S. only had 124,000 fatalities at the time of his speech, Breitbart News reported.

6. Biden Falsely Claimed His Deceased Son Was the U.S. Attorney General

Biden delivered remarks at a CNN town hall event where he claimed his deceased son Beau Biden was the attorney general of the United States.

Only problem is, that position was held by the likes of Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch during the Obama administration. Beau Biden served as Delaware’s attorney general.

“My son—my deceased son—was the Attorney General of the United States and before that, he was a federal prosecutor in
one of the largest office’s [sic] in the country in Philadelphia,” Biden said.

For more of Biden’s misleading claims contained in The Quotable Joe, you can purchase the book here.