President Joe Biden made a bizarre claim in a speech on Friday that he had taught political theory at an Ivy League university, where he served only as a visiting scholar and honorary professor.
Biden, at 80, the nation’s oldest-ever president, spoke Thursday at Prince George Community College in Maryland for an economic speech that he sought to contrast with what he calls “Bidenomics” with predecessor Donald Trump’s police force.
At one point, however, the president focused his speech on a common theme of democracy being “under siege” when he suddenly discussed his time at the University of Pennsylvania.
“We have to fight for it,” Biden said. ”I taught at the University of Pennsylvania for four years and I taught political theory. And people, you always hear, every generation has to fight for democracy.’
Although Biden served as the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Professor of the Practice from 2017 to 2019, there are no records of him teaching classes.
President Joe Biden made a bizarre claim in a speech on Friday that he had taught political theory at an Ivy League university, where he served only as a visiting scholar and honorary professor.
Biden appeared on campus about a dozen times for official events between leaving the vice presidency and beginning his candidacy for president. Philadelphia researcher reported.
However, these were never full-time classes and were largely limited to question-and-answer sessions and public events – including one with former British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg – which earned him $900,000.
He did give a lecture at the university’s Wharton School of Economics, ironically an alma mater of former President Trump.
In 2018, the university opened the Penn Biden Center for diplomacy and global engagement in Washington, DC.
FBI investigators searched President Biden’s office at the D.C. think tank — days after his own lawyer identified classified material there, it was revealed Tuesday.
Biden last attended the university’s commencement ceremony in May, along with recently indicted son Hunter.
Biden’s age has often led him to make incorrect statements This is evident from recent opinion polls most consider the president too old to serve again.
Biden appeared on campus for official events about a dozen times between leaving the vice presidency and beginning his candidacy for president
In 2018, the university opened the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, DC. FBI investigators searched the office that President Biden used to have at the DC think tank
Biden last attended the university’s commencement ceremony in May, along with recently indicted son Hunter
Biden helps cut the ribbon at the opening of the Penn Biden Center in 2018
Vice President Joe Biden speaks at the University of Pennsylvania Irvine Auditorium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on February 19, 2019. Biden joined Amy Gutmann, president of the University of Pennsylvania, in discussing global affairs and other current topics
Former Vice President Joe Biden participates in a forum on the college opioid epidemic in April 2019
In May, Biden again falsely claimed that his son Beau had been killed while serving in Iraq while visiting U.S. troops stationed in Japan on Monday.
It was at least the third time that America’s oldest living president spoke misleadingly in public about the death of his eldest son.
In October 2022, Biden said Beau died in Iraq while speaking at Camp Hale in Colorado.
“Imagine – I mean it sincerely – me saying this as the father of a man who won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq. “Imagine the courage, the daring and the sincere sacrifice – the sincere sacrifice that they all made,” Biden said at the time.
He also said Beau was killed in Iraq during a speech in Florida in November, shortly after confusing the war in Ukraine with the war in Iraq.
“Inflation is a global problem right now,” the president said. “There’s a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia is doing. Excuse me, the war in Ukraine.’
“I think about Iraq because my son died there — because he died,” Biden then explained.
The president has long linked his service and the military’s use of burns to Beau’s brain cancer diagnosis.
As many as two-thirds of the president’s own party think he is too old, even if he is running a re-election campaign in 2024
There is a 26 percent margin between those who think President Joe Biden, 80, is too old to serve a second term, and those who think Republican front-runner and former President Donald Trump, 77, will be too old in 2024 old for another shot at the presidency.
“I don’t think I can prove it yet, he came back with stage 4 glioblastoma. For eighteen months he lived knowing he was going to die,” Biden said in 2019.
The younger Biden deployed to Iraq in 2009 and earned a Bronze Star medal for his service there as part of the military.
The president has also been criticized for invoking his son Beau in military speeches in the past.
Both the New York Times and the Washington Post published op-eds on Wednesday labeling 80-year-old President Joe Biden as too old to run for re-election in 2024.
Although 80-year-old Biden is only three years older than 77-year-old Donald Trump, there is a 26 percent margin between those who think Biden is too old and those who think the ex-president is too old to serve another term to sit.
A new poll from the Wall Street Journal The report, taken from Aug. 24 to 30 and released Monday, shows that only 36 percent of 1,500 voters surveyed think Biden is mentally fit for office, while 46 percent think Trump is mentally fit for the job.
The latest shows that 75 percent of voters think Biden is too old, compared to only 47 percent who think the same about Trump.
Those who think Biden is too old include as many as two-thirds of Democrats.
Author Franklin Foer, who wrote a biography of Biden’s first two years as president, said Sunday that he would not be “totally shocked” if the president dropped out of the race before the end of the year.
When NBC Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Sunday how he would respond if Biden decided not to complete his 2024 bid, Foer said, “It would be a surprise to me. But it wouldn’t be a total surprise.’
The author, who had “unparalleled access” to Biden and his inner circle, noted, according to publisher Penguin Random House, that “one of the chief insecurities” of the president “is that he doesn’t want to be seen as stupid.”
Biden, 80, announced his bid for a second term with Vice President Kamala Harris in late April — but questions have been raised over the past year about whether the president is too old or unfit to serve four more years.