Well, it finally happened, everyone. Joe Biden told a lie so big that even the fact-checkers, who usually cover for him, couldn’t spin it.

As Nina wrote yesterday, the White House schedule sent Old Grandpa Joe to Anchorage, Alaska, on his way back from Vietnam, in order to observe 9/11 there. The White House’s excuse, as told to Fox News’s Peter Doocy, was that “22 years after Pearl Harbor, U.S. presidents were not still going to visit Hawaii.” As people on Twitter/X pointed out, 22 years after Pearl Harbor was the year 1963… which means that when December 7, 1963 rolled around, Lyndon Johnson had been president for exactly 15 whole (24 hour) days, after being sworn in late in the day on November 22nd, after John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

But then even that argument fell apart. Thanks to the JFK Library, it appears that President Kennedy DID go to Pearl Harbor in June of 1963. OUCH.

John F. Kennedy visited Pearl Harbor in 1963. This WH is national disgrace. https://t.co/pLEYV0wP0F pic.twitter.com/Q2mypxAHxa

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 12, 2023

But then came Joe Biden’s actual speech in Alaska. And wouldn’t you know it, the Big Guy told a big whopper.

Yes, you heard that right. Joe Biden just told his audience in Alaska and all over the world that he was at Ground Zero on September 12th and “looking at the building.” And this is a HUGE lie. Joe Biden was in Washington D.C. on September 12, 2001 – as news reports said at the time.

On September 12, 2001 Joe Biden was in Washington DC debating and voting for a Senate resolution to condemn the attacks on the World Trade Center.

This man isn’t actually Forrest Gump, but he wants you to think he ishttps://t.co/5R4e3TEu7V https://t.co/hoTn1CsLEo pic.twitter.com/jARk0mqtE3

— Enguerrand VII de Coucy (@ingelramdecoucy) September 11, 2023

Now, Joe Biden DID go to Ground Zero with a congressional delegation on September 20, 2001 – but that was nine days AFTER the attacks, not “the next day.” What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a problem. As Bethany Mandel points out, there are only two options here.

He’s either a pathological liar or has totally lost touch with reality. Two great options. https://t.co/1g9vcIJ4x6

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) September 11, 2023

This whopper was simply too big and too easy to debunk for even the fact-checkers to ignore. Well, the ever-faithful media weighed their options. Do they admit that Biden was tired after his Vietnam to Alaska trip and slipped up, thereby raising more questions about his age and stamina? Or do they admit that Joe Biden lied, and not offer any explanations beyond that?

Snopes led the way, declaring the story “false.”

The Congressional Record shows that Biden was in Washington, D.C., that day, not New York City. Not only was he in attendance at a Senate session, but as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee managed the discussion prior to a vote that would unanimously confirm a joint resolution condemning the 9/11 attacks.

This in confirmed in contemporaneous news coverage. As The News Journal of Wilmington, Delaware, reported the following day:

Just as he had hoped and demanded, Delaware Sen. Joe Biden spent Wednesday [Sept. 12] exactly where he wanted: in the U.S. Senate.

Biden was one of the first and most vociferous in demanding that Congress return to action to prove the government is functioning. Terrorists win, he said only hours after Tuesday’s attack, when the government goes into hiding.

Biden would not visit ground zero for the first time until a week later, on Sept. 20, 2001, when, according to The Associated Press, he joined a delegation of senators who traveled by train from Washington to New York to see the devastation with their own eyes.

Nothing but the facts, ma’am, nothing but the facts. No attempt to explain away the lie, or a weak spin of “well what he REALLY meant was” or anything like that. That’s how you know that the lie was too big to ignore.

And then CNN’s so-called “fact-checker,” Daniel Dale, decided that he had better say something. After all, CNN is actually PAYING him to do this stuff, so if he misses the obvious lay-up, why should they bother writing him a check? Notably, the initial publication time was 10:56 pm Eastern Time, so good job juuuuuuust getting it in under the wire and AFTER the evening news.

Facts First: Biden was not at Ground Zero the day after 9/11. He actually went to Ground Zero nine days after the attacks.

Asked Monday night about the claim, the White House provided a photo and article showing that Biden, then a senator for Delaware, toured Ground Zero on September 20, 2001. A White House official then emailed this comment on condition of anonymity: “The President first visited the World Trade Center nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks as part of a bipartisan delegation from the Senate.”

As The New York Post noted on Monday, Biden wrote in a 2007 memoir that he “headed back to the Capitol” on September 12, 2001. He spoke that day in the US Senate.

So, even the White House hasn’t quite figured out how they want to spin it yet. But then Dale decided to throw in all those moments that he’s fact-checked before, just so we know that he is all in on the “pathological liar” angle and NOT the “senile old man who doesn’t know where he is” angle.

It’s possible, of course, that Biden genuinely misremembered when his visit to Ground Zero occurred. As president, though, he has repeatedly made false claims about his past.

He did it three times in a single speech last month – falsely claiming to have witnessed a bridge collapse in Pittsburgh in 2022 (he actually visited the site more than six hours after the collapse), falsely claiming his grandfather had died just days prior to his own birth at the same hospital (his paternal grandfather died more than a year prior in another state), and again repeating a long-debunked false story about a supposed conversation with an Amtrak conductor who was deceased at the time the story would have had to take place.

In 2021 and 2022, he falsely claimed to have been arrested during a civil rights protest (he had previously said merely that an officer had taken him home from a protest), falsely claimed he “used to drive an 18-wheeler” (the White House said he once had a job driving a different vehicle, a school bus), falsely claimed to have visited the Pittsburgh synagogue where worshippers were killed in a 2018 mass shooting (he had spoken to its rabbi by phone but had not gone), falsely claimed to have visited Iraq and Afghanistan as president (he made repeated visits as a senator and vice president but not as president), told a false story involving a late relative and the Purple Heart, and falsely described his interactions decades ago with late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Yikes. When CNN’s fact-checker is forced to dump on you in order to prove that you have a pattern of lying, you KNOW this particular whopper did not play well.

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who acts as their “fact-checker,” was forced to admit recently that “certain stories” that Joe Biden tells “aren’t credible.” Pssst, Glenn? It’s okay to call them lies. He couldn’t even bring himself to use his “Pinocchio rating scale” on that particular column – after all, if you simply say that the stories “aren’t credible,” then you don’t have to determine the severity of the lies. Now, Kessler has yet to weigh in on this particular whopper, but since Snopes and Dale have both signaled that this time, it’s okay to call Grandpa Joe out for his gigantic fib, I’m guessing that Kessler will be forced to put something up at some point. If he does, I will update this post.

The truth is that Joe has always been a pathological liar, but he is also losing touch with reality. Embracing the truth of “both” does not lessen the impact of either one. Biden is an old man who looks every inch of his almost 81 years. He is obviously in cognitive decline. We are watching in real time what happens when someone who has constantly plagiarized or lied throughout his adult life descends into senility. It’s not pretty. But all the fact-checkers can manage to do is admit that Biden is a liar, and then hope no one notices that they did. Admitting that the old man has lost his marbles and is too old for the job, on top of the lying? They can’t do it. At least, not yet. We never know when the next flight of stairs might be the last one.

UPDATE 12:00 PM PT
Still crickets from Glenn Kessler, who instead has a hard-hitting column up on… former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchison’s new book, and all the books that Trump “insiders” have published and why they sell better than the books on Biden. Gripping stuff, there!

Daniel Dale now sounds utterly shocked, SHOCKED, that Joe Biden has been lying a lot recently! Emphasis on “recently.”

At this point? @ddale8, have you listened to Joe Biden at **any point** circa 1983 up to now? You think this all just started "at this point"? https://t.co/gzkh2KU0OP

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) September 12, 2023

Meanwhile, the White House still has no idea how to spin this, so… they’re just not going to hold any press briefings until they figure it out or hope everyone forgets about it.

no briefing today – and no briefing schedule for this week yet either. https://t.co/syz1HnrZyr

— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) September 12, 2023

Karine Jean-Pierre is probably trying to figure out how to not answer questions about the impeachment inquiry, too.

Featured image: original Victory Girls art by Darleen Click