Jake Tapper Laughs at Biden’s False Claim He Marched for Civil Rights: ‘That Is Really, Really Weird’

Jake Tapper Laughs at Biden’s False Claim He Marched for Civil Rights: ‘That Is Really, Really Weird’

The panel on Tuesday’s edition of The Lead with Jake Tapper had a good laugh over Joe Biden’s embellishment of his role–or lack thereof–in the civil rights movement during one of his past presidential campaigns.

Tapper played a clip of Biden in 1987 claiming that he had marched in the civil rights movement “with tens of thousands of others to change attitudes.” The anchor then read a piece from a Monday story from The New York Times that reported Biden was reminded by campaign aides at the time to not use that line in a speech because it was untrue. Biden would reportedly tell his aides he understood, then continue telling the story anyway.

“That is really, really weird,” Tapper said as he looked to CNN reporter Jeff Zeleny for comment.

Zeleny noted that Biden has a tendency to embellish and that his aides at the time of his 1988 run tried to cover for him by saying “he was in office marching for the idea of civil rights, but wasn’t actually marching in the streets.”

The observation drew laughter from the rest of the panel as Zeleny, in an all-time understatement, noted “that would not fly as much” in today’s political environment.

Karen Finney, who was a spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, then noted that there are other candidates who did actually march in the streets. She was talking specifically about Bernie Sanders, who as she noted, “likes to talk about it a lot.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

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