That
Joe Biden and the truth have been distant acquaintances from time to
time was recently seen in March (at NewsBusters;
at BizzyBlog)
when the Vice President claimed that Louisiana was losing 400 jobs a
day. Louisiana at the time was actually gaining jobs.
The math-challenged Biden, who infamously said during the
presidential campaign that the
word “jobs” has three letters,
is now making claims that he had face-to-face meetings with President
Bush which aides and others don’t recall or have a record of. Not
surprisingly, Biden’s narrative concerning these alleged meetings is
meant to demonstrate what an influential truth-to-power guy he is.
Gag me.
Bill Sammon of Fox News has
the story,
which is a virtual lock not to make it into the established alphabet TV
networks or into what’s left of the establishment’s newspapers:
Bush Aides Challenge Biden’s Boasts of Oval Office
Slapdowns
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the
veracity of Vice President Joe Biden’s claim this week of having
privately castigated Bush.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the
veracity of Vice President Joe Biden’s claim this week of having
privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an
earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his
boss’s purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide
witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
“The vice president stands by his remarks,” Carney told FOX News
without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
“I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval
Office,” Biden told CNN, “‘Well, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’m a leader.’ And I
said: ‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is
following.’”
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides
who
also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former
senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had
challenged Bush’s moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private
meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story
about dressing down the president.
“When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of
opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last
election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his
staff,” Biden said on HBO’s “Real Time with Bill Maher” in April 2006.
“And the president will say things to me, and I’ll literally turn to
the president, say: ‘Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you
don’t know the facts?’ And he’ll look at me and he’ll say - my word -
he’ll look at me and he’ll say: ‘My instincts.’ He said: ‘I have good
instincts.’ I said: ‘Mr. President, your instincts aren’t good enough.’”
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
“I never recall Biden saying any of that,” former White House
press
secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush’s
White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes
from Biden. “I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the
time. I don’t think that’s true.”
I think the giveaway that Biden is making it up is the claim that he
met with Bush alone “all the time.”
If these or other Bush-Biden meetings occurred, the press seems to
never have noticed. The following isn’t conclusive, but it surely
doesn’t help Biden. Google News Archive all-dates searches (all in
quotes) on “Biden
meets with Bush,” “Biden
met with Bush,” “Biden
speaks with Bush,” “Biden
spoke with Bush” and “Biden
addresses Bush” all come up empty. Similarly, nothing comes back
for “Bush
meets with Biden,” “Bush
met with Biden,” “Bush
spoke with Biden,” “Bush
speaks with Biden,” “Bush
addresses Biden,” “Bush
and Biden met,” or “Biden
and Bush met.”
By contrast, I was able to find one hit each for “Kennedy
and Bush met” and “Bush
and Kennedy met.”
I for one won’t be surprised if I someday find Biden’s picture next
to the
description of this term.
Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.
