1965 serves as both the year Biden claims he applied to the Naval Academy, and the year he graduated from the University of Delaware
Friday, Joe Biden told graduating midshipmen at the Annapolis Naval Academy that he had applied to enter the academy in 1965. However, that doesn’t check out. Biden graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965, and the naval academy does not offer graduate degrees of any kind.
From the New York Post:
“I was told the Class of ’72 is here. I was appointed to the academy in 1965 by a senator who I was running against in 1972 — never planned it that way. I wasn’t old enough to be sworn in. I was only 29 years old when I was running,” Biden said.
“He was a fine man. His name is J. Caleb Boggs,” the president went on. “I didn’t come to the academy because I wanted to be a football star. And you had a guy named [Roger] Staubach and [Joe] Bellino here. So I went to Delaware.”
“But all kidding aside,” Biden continued on Friday, “the best line of the debate was after it’s all over, the announcer, the questioner — who was a good guy, but supported my opponent, who was a good man as well, I might add — and he said, ‘Sen. Boggs, is there anything else you want to say?’ And he said, ‘Yes, just one thing.’ And he took the microphone. He said, ‘You know, Joe, if you accepted my commission to the — my appointment to the academy,’ he said, ‘you’d still have one year and three months’ active duty and I’d have no problems right now.’”
Biden has not mentioned the naval academy before, nor has he told the story about Senator Boggs previously. However, given that the timeline does not add up with his graduation from Delaware and his alleged application to the naval academy, it’s safe to say that the story did not happen exactly as Biden told it, if at all.
Biden received five student draft deferments during the raging Vietnam War which occurred during this time, and upon completing law school cited childhood asthma as an excuse not to serve–a condition he has never spoken about, nor wrote about in his biography.
Biden has a habit of seeking to relate to his audiences by sharing questionable anecdotes about his personal experiences — as well as making false or exaggerated claims.
In September, Biden told Jewish leaders that he remembered “spending time at” and “going to” the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh after the mass murder of 11 people in 2018. The synagogue said he never visited and the White House later said he was thinking about a 2019 phone call to the synagogue’s rabbi.
Biden also lied about receiving his first job offer from an Idaho company, being arrested for protesting in the Civil Rights Movement, and about being arrested in South Africa while trying to see Nelson Mandela.
Biden lies a lot. But there’s a tell–if his mouth is open, and sound is coming out, you know it’s a lie.
