Joe Biden Lied in 1987 with Claim He Marched in Civil Rights Movement

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the 2020 Democrat frontrunner for president, lied in 1987 during his first of many runs for the Oval Office by claiming he marched in the Civil Rights Movement–something he never did.

The New York Times‘ Matt Flegenheimer, in a Monday report, resurfaced the 1987 lie by Biden before an audience in New Hampshire, where he was campaigning for the Democrat nomination for president for the first time in his long political career.

“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 Times. “I marched with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes. And we changed attitudes.”

Flegenheimer, in describing the incident, writes that Biden was “riffing again,” including “an R.F.K. anecdote, a word about ‘civil wrongs,’ a meandering joke about the baseball commissioner,” and that Biden’s “aides knew enough to worry a little” given his tendency to make gaffes that severely hurt his political opportunities.

And when Biden made that false claim that he had marched in the Civil Rights Movement when in fact he had not done any such marching, his aides cringed, per the Times’Flegenheimer.

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“More than once, advisers had gently reminded Mr. Biden of the problem with this formulation: He had not actually marched during the civil rights movement,” Flegenheimer wrote. “And more than once, Mr. Biden assured them he understood — and kept telling the story anyway.”

A few months later, in September 1987, Flegenheimer writes that Biden’s lies and “recklessness as a candidate” had finally “caught up with him.”

“He was accused of plagiarizing in campaign speeches,” Flegenheimer wrote. “He had inflated his academic record. Reporters began calling out his exaggerated youth activism.”

On Capitol Hill, Flegenheimer writes, Biden called a “stop-the-bleeding news conference” at which he “vowed that day to fight on.”

“I’ve done some dumb things,” Biden said at that presser. “And I’ll do dumb things again.”

Despite his vow to fight through the mess and keep campaigning for the Democrat nomination for president, Flegenheimer writes, Biden “quit the race within a week.”

“Thirty-two years later, as Mr. Biden seeks the presidency for a third time, his disastrous campaign for the 1988 Democratic nomination offers a revealing look at the personal tics and political flaws of the front-runner in the 2020 race — traits that, in many ways, continue to color Mr. Biden’s public life,” Flegenheimer writes.