Some of President Biden's many past lies caught up to him this week.

Biden himself got it all rolling with his false claim on July 28 that at one time he drove a tractor-trailer.  The following day, Fox News and Tucker Carlson in particular developed that story and found several clips of Biden in February 2020 falsely claiming he'd gone to South Africa to meet Nelson Mandela and get himself arrested on Mandela's behalf, who was in jail at the time — for terrorist activities.

Tucker aired these following three clips:

1:02 — This lie was stated in February 2020 in South Carolina before the SC Primary. ... "I had the great honor of being arrested with our UN Ambassador, ah on the streets of Soweto, trying to get to see him, on Robben's Island."...

1:09 — This one also is from February 2020. ... "One of fo fun saintly guys, I ever knew, because I got arrested trying to see him, when I went down to South Africa.  Nelson Mandela." ...

1:17 — This one's also from February 2020, and was originally aired on C-Span. ... "I came back from S-South Africa, trying to see Nelson Mandela, and getting arrested for trying to see him on Robben's Island t'geh t'geh he was in prison." ...

Several hours before Tucker's show aired, the Fox News program Outnumbered aired.  At the 33:56 mark of this clip, co-host Emily Compagno noted, "What too is so ridiculous is to me, you know, when he, that wh- whole South Africa commentary that he made; I lived there for a little while, and the thought — first of all, it's "Robben Island," not "Robben's Island," as he called it; Soweto is almost 800 miles as well, from Robben Island."

I hadn't realized that.  I'd known that Biden had made this false claim in 2020, but it never occurred to me fact-check whether Robben Island is adjacent to Soweto.  At the time, I figured, saying "Robben Island" is like saying "Riker's Island," and it's really easy to drive to Riker's Island from anywhere in New York City.

I checked this on Google Maps.  According to Google, Robben Island is just that: an island.  It lies in the South Atlantic about 10 miles north of Cape Town, and about 3 miles from the nearest land.  There are no bridges to the island.  According to Google, Cape Town International Airport is two hours by air from Soweto and 1,394 km (837 miles) by road.

None of this ever happened.  Biden lied about all of this.

Biden himself 'fessed up to the truth to CNN on February 28, 2020, when he told them, "When I said 'arrested,' I meant, I was not able to — I was not able to move, cops — Afrikaaners — would not let me go with them, made me stay where I was.  I guess I I wasn't arrested; I was stopped."

It turns out that when Biden had deplaned, the Afrikaaner security officers directed him to use the "Whites Only" entrance into the terminal, and he refused.  That is the only time he was "stopped" by anybody.

Biden also lied about the aftermath, when Mandela purportedly attempted to go to Washington to see Biden and thank him for having tried to visit him while Mandela was in prison.

At an event in Las Vegas, Biden claimed that after Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, Mandela went to Washington and visited Biden in his office.  "(Mandela) threw his arms around me and said, 'I want to say thank you.' I (Biden) said, 'What are you thanking me for, Mr. President?'  He said, 'You tried to see me.  You got arrested trying to see me.'"

It never happened.

The simple truth is, Biden is a serial, compulsive, chronic liar.  Many of his lies contain multiple lies.

For example, there is Biden's false claim at his March 25 press conference — and repeated on many other occasions — that most of the Trump tax cut benefits only "the top 1%."  Biden said on this occasion, "Did you hear them complain when they passed close to $2 trillion Trump tax cut, 83% going to the top 1%. Do you hear them talk about that at all?"

That is false.  According to factcheck.org, "[h]e repeated two familiar talking points on taxes, including the misleading claim that '83%' of the benefits in the GOP's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act are "going to the top 1%."  That only becomes the case in 2027 when most of the individual income tax cuts are set to expire but corporate tax cuts remain."

In the same Tucker Carlson clip already referenced above, he aired a clip of Biden in 2009 claiming that he himself at one time had mined coal.

0:25 — ...Hope you will hold against me (???), but I am a chh-ard coal miner, anthracite coal, Scranton, Pennsylvania.  Okay, that's where I was born and raised, and it's nice to be back in coal country...

At the recent U.S./E.U. Summit on June 14 in Brussels, Biden also falsely claimed that his great-grandfather mined coal.

My dad, uh, had a transition in, uh, the city we lived in coal was dying, it no longer relevant, y-you all he was not my great-grandfather was a, a a coalminer he was a mining engineer but —

Last year, Biden falsely claimed  he "was raised politically" when a teenager at a Union Baptist Black church in Wilmington.  According to the N.Y. Post story:

When I was a teenager in Delaware, for real, I got involved in the civil rights movement... I'd go to 8 o'clock Mass, then I'd go to Reverend (Otis) Herring's church where we'd meet in order to organize and figure where we were going to go, whether we were going to desegregate the Rialto movie theater or what we were going to do...I got my education, for real, in the black church, and that's not hyperbole, it's a fact.

But it wasn't "real."  It never happened.  Nobody at the church remembers him, or any such callow White teenager.  By the way, despite having been outed last year by The N.Y. Post, Biden referred to this falsehood again just the other day.

Why does Biden tell so many lies? 

As it happens, Michael Goodwin wrote about this very issue earlier this week in The New York Post in his commentary about Andrew Cuomo's many current lies.  Goodwin wrote:

As a young reporter covering New York politics, I was shocked at how frequently city and state officials lied to the press. They did it on big issues and small ones, to your face and in writing, on the record and off the record. It was so automatic and casual that it seemed instinctive. 

I once mentioned my dismay to Murray Kempton, an older, courtly, onetime Post columnist whose generosity of spirit extended even to the most venal, as long as they weren't politicians. 

Kempton looked at me with a seen-it-all shrug and declared: "Why shouldn't they lie to you? They lie to themselves all the time." 

Yah.  It could be as simple as that.  Biden lies to us for the same reason dogs lick their own gonads — because he can.

Photo credit: YouTube screen grab.

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