Unscripted Biden Makes Such a Bad Blunder, CNN Reporter Has to Fact-Check Him in Middle of Speech
During the presidential address to Congress on Wednesday, Joe Biden claimed he has “traveled over 17,000 miles” with President Xi Jinping of the Chinese Communist Party.
According to multiple left-wing fact-checks, this claim is unverified and misleading.
Biden had made the very same claim on multiple previous occasions, according to The Washington Post.
Once was at a Feb. 16, 2021, town hall. Another, during an interview with Norah O’Donnell of CBS News on Feb. 7. Going even further back, Biden made the claim during a Jan. 10 campaign rally at Sparks High School in Nevada.
Joe Biden brags about the time he’s spent with Communist China’s leader Xi Jingping pic.twitter.com/DxZ3h2SfnU
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 29, 2021
“I spent a lot of time with President Xi,” Biden said during Wednesday’s address.
“Traveled over 17,000 miles with him.”
CNN reporter Daniel Dale was quick to point out the president’s inaccurate statement, tweeting, “Biden’s ‘I traveled over 17,000 miles with’ Xi Jinping claim is extremely inaccurate, as WaPo has shown. He’s spent a lot of time with Xi, but that ‘miles’ number is very false.”
Biden’s “I traveled over 17,000 miles with” Xi Jinping claim is extremely inaccurate, as WaPo has shown. He’s spent a lot of time with Xi, but that “miles” number is very false.
That was an ad-lib; Biden’s text has been very factual, but he just started talkin’ for a second.
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 29, 2021
Also, it appears that the president ad-libbed this dubious boast.
The claim does not appear in the pre-released White House transcript of the address.
Multiple left-leaning organizations have already fact-checked this claim from Biden, rating it false.
For example, a Feb. 23 article from CNN claimed that Biden “has not traveled anywhere close to 17,000 miles ‘with’ Xi.”
Additionally, The Post noted while there’s “certainly an impressive amount of face time” that Biden has spent with Xi, his “mileage number has kept us puzzling till our puzzler was sore.”
uh –> Biden’s repeated claim he’s ‘traveled 17,000 miles with’ Xi Jinping https://t.co/exPn7nfZpE
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) April 29, 2021
“As far as we could tell, the only time Biden and Xi appear to have traveled together was when they visited Qingchengshan High School in Dujiangyan,” The Post noted.
“We found a clue about what Biden was trying to say when we searched as many transcript archives as we could and found a statement Biden made at a Hillary Clinton campaign event on Nov. 4, 2016: ‘Because the former president of China and President Obama seven years ago thought we should get to know one another, I traveled 17,000 miles through his country and our country over nine days.'”
One White House official told The Post that “traveling with” is not an accurate statement.
Rather, Biden may have been referencing “the total travel back and forth” for meetings that Xi and Biden have held together.
Although the White House made this concession all the way back in February, Biden has continued to forward this false claim.
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