CNN Gives Biden a Hand by Completely Ignoring His Lie During Debate

Joe Biden backers can breathe easy knowing CNN’s got his back.

Sunday night’s two-hour presidential primary debate for the former vice president and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont had its share of tension between the two remaining contenders for the Democratic nomination, but when it was over, one thing was perfectly clear:

CNN is so in the tank for Biden that when it comes to even calling out a flagrant lie, its moderators would take a pass.

As some Americans might remember from the long-ago days of February, before the coronavirus pandemic took over the public consciousness, Biden had added to his already considerable reputation for stretching the truth when he claimed on multiple occasions that he’d been “arrested” during the apartheid days of South Africa while trying to visit human rights icon Nelson Mandela.

“This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid,” Biden told a South Carolina audience on Feb. 11, according to The Washington Post.

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“I had the great honor of meeting him. I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robbens Island.”

It wasn’t just a Biden-esque slip of the tongue, either. He made the claim about the alleged arrest — which would have taken place in 1977 — twice more in the following week, according to The New York Times. And all evidence and common sense pointed to the fact that it wasn’t true.

Biden had never mentioned an “arrest” in South Africa before — including in his own memoirs, according to The Times — and even the apartheid government of South Africa in the 1970s would have thought twice about placing a sitting senator of the United States under arrest under any circumstances.

Eventually, of course, reality intruded, and before the month was out Biden was forced to admit that his heroic “arrest” was nothing more than being held briefly at a South African airport because he protested being separated from black lawmakers making a visit with him.

“I guess I wasn’t arrested, I was stopped. I was not able to move where I wanted to go,” Biden told CNN’s John Berman on Feb. 28.

Just over two weeks later, on Sunday night, Biden was on a national stage in his first debate since admitting that he’d lied about what to most people — and all politicians – would have been a key life event: getting arrested by an authoritarian regime while trying to visit a global hero like Mandela.