<mediadc-video-embed data-state="{"cms.site.owner":{"_ref":"00000161-3486-d333-a9e9-76c6fbf30000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b93390000"},"cms.content.publishDate":1654100112584,"cms.content.publishUser":{"_ref":"0000017c-98ff-dba3-adfd-dffff9c60000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"cms.content.updateDate":1654100112584,"cms.content.updateUser":{"_ref":"0000017c-98ff-dba3-adfd-dffff9c60000","_type":"00000161-3461-dd66-ab67-fd6b933a0007"},"rawHtml":"
var _bp = _bp||[]; _bp.push({ "div": "Brid_54096517", "obj": {"id":"27789","width":"16","height":"9","video":"1023706"} }); ","_id":"00000181-200c-d297-a5e3-3f8dad5f0002","_type":"2f5a8339-a89a-3738-9cd2-3ddf0c8da574"}”>Video EmbedPresident Joe Biden is drawing scrutiny for a claim he was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1965 — which does not line up with historical data.
Biden delivered a commencement speech Friday, sharing the story of an appointment from former Sen. J. Caleb Boggs (R-DE).
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“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. The president added later that “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.”
The line attracted quick blowback.
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The Naval Academy does not offer graduate degrees, and Biden attended Syracuse University for law school after finishing at the University of Delaware. Biden was a star football player in high school and did play on Delaware’s freshman team in 1961. When asked about the claim on Tuesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she “did not hear that part of the speech.”
“I hear you,” she told a reporter who pressed the issue. “I need to read it myself and just go back and see what you’re talking about exactly. I can’t speak to it right now.”
Biden has a history of making claims about his background that turn out to be embellished, such as stories about driving an 18-wheeler and getting arrested during a civil rights protest.
The president has made the Naval Academy claim before too — at the same institution and also during a graduation speech. In 2010, Biden told a similar story, only citing 1960 rather than 1965.
“In 1960, I was a pretty good football player at the University of Delaware, and I was one of the guys that applied to come to this great academy,” he said 12 years ago. “And a fellow named J. Caleb Boggs considered me, and I thought I was going to be a pretty good ballplayer. And then I found out you had two guys in the backfield back in those days admiral, and I realized I wasn’t going to get a chance to play at all. You had a guy named Staubach, and a guy named Bellino, so I went to the University of Delaware.”
Biden graduated from high school in 1961. After making the claim on Friday, Biden began his next statement with “all kidding aside,” though it’s not clear exactly what part the president was kidding about.
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The claim was panned by some conservatives, who pointed to Biden’s medical deferment from serving in the military in Vietnam.
“If Biden was accepted into the Naval Academy in the 1960s, then his medical deferment from the Vietnam-era military draft for asthma would be scrutinized,” Republican National Committee spokesman Kyle Martinsen said in a statement. “Biden claimed his desire to be a ‘football star’ was why he didn’t go to the Naval Academy, not medical ineligibility. If Biden wasn’t ‘appointed,’ then he was simply lying to our midshipmen. Either way, Americans deserve answers.”
