‘Joe talked about bankruptcy—Joe, you helped write that bankruptcy bill…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Presidential contender Joe Biden was caught in another lie after announcing before Sunday’s debate with fellow Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders that he would support a radical, progressive-backed plan to ease penalties for filing bankruptcy.
As the conservative America Rising PAC noted, this appeared to be a 180-degree flip–flop from the 2005 legislation that Biden helped author in the Senate extending even more power to banks and credit agencies.
Sanders also called Biden out on his hypocrisy during the debate.
But that charge to take ownership of his record led Biden, instead, to flat-out lie.
“This is a little bit about leadership as well,” Sanders said. “Joe talked about bankruptcy—Joe, you helped write that bankruptcy bill.”
“I did not!” exclaimed Biden.
America Rising issued two contemporary articles—one from a 2019 Washington Post op-ed, and one from a 2009 Huffington Post piece as evidence, along with a link to information about the vote itself, which Biden supported.
Biden’s reversal on bankruptcy regulations was one of several ways the former vice president sought to lurch to the left as he sought to stave off Sanders’s challenge to his front-runner status.
While the former Delaware senator may, arguably, have been considered a “moderate” during some of his nearly 40 years in Congress, he has, indisputably, shed that label of late.
But one habit that Biden can’t seem to kick is his penchant for fabrications. Last week, for instance, Washington Post fact-checkers gave his campaign four “Pinocchios” for doctoring a video to mislead the public about President Donald Trump’s comments on the coronavirus.
Not only has he frequently denied his own record and reversed his past claims on the campaign trail, but he faced criticism for some of his confabulations during speeches, in which he seemed to embellish the details for dramatic effect.
Biden dismissed the charge during a September appearance on the Stephen Colbert show.
“Any gaffe that I have made—and I’ve made gaffes like every politician I know has—have been not about a substantive issue,” he claimed. “They’ve been about other—I’m trying to talk about what other people have done.”
Biden sought to deflect from his fact-fudging by claiming it still paled in comparison to the policies of the Trump administration.
“I don’t get wrong things like, you know, there is, uh, we should lock kids up in cages at the border,” he said. “… The devil lives in the details if the details that you’re talking about would affect the outcome of something that is about to happen or should happen.”
Biden neglected to mention, however, that similar border-detention policies also were in effect during the Obama administration, when he served as vice president.
Increasingly, as the weight of the campaign trail and his advanced age begin to take their toll, critics on both the Right and Left have expressed their alarm at Biden’s deteriorating cognitive functions.