Biden Repeats False Claims 

President Joe Biden has repeatedly claimed that he turned down an appointment to play football in the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Biden made this claim during his commencement speech at West Point on Saturday.

The president told the West Point Graduates that he was appointed by Sen. J. Caleb Boggs (R-DE) years before he defeated him in the 1972 election to become a U.S. senator.

Biden tells West Point graduates that he was "appointed" to the Naval Academy, where he "wanted to play football."

He has repeated this lie many times before and there is still no record any of it ever happened. pic.twitter.com/JxLC1EG9fO

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 25, 2024

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“I was appointed by the fella I ran against when I was 29 to the Naval Academy. I was one of 10. I wanted to play football,” Biden said in his speech. “And I’d found out two days earlier they had a quarterback named Roger Staubach and a halfback named Joe Bellino. I said I’m not going there, and I went to Delaware. Not a joke.”

Joe Biden just said he was “appointed” to the Naval Academy.

There is no record of this ever happening.

Biden is an embarrassment.pic.twitter.com/CwsOeXf6qF

— Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸 (@Bubblebathgirl) May 25, 2024

According to Breitbart News, Biden graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965, which makes it almost impossible that he would have applied to attend the Naval Academy then. He played briefly on the 1961 freshman team but did not finish the season.

In addition, Staubach graduated from the Naval Academy in 1965, while Bellino graduated in 1961. Aside from the president’s claim of getting appointed to the Naval Academy, Biden claimed he used to drive an 18-wheeler. The president also claimed he was the first member of his family to attend college.

Biden previously told the Naval Academy graduates the same story in 2022 when he claimed he had been accepted to the military institution in 1965 but declined to attend. However, on Saturday, he did not offer a date.

RNC Research, an X account operated by the Republican National Committee, tagged Biden’s claims as questionable.

“He has repeated this lie many times before, and there is still no record any of it ever happened,” the RNC posted.

Before he fell:
Biden told Air Force graduates he was ‘chosen by’ a nameless Senator for the Naval Academy after high school graduation.
In 2022, he told Naval Academy graduates he was "appointed to the Naval Academy in 1965."
There is no record of either.pic.twitter.com/5rxMoiIbOs

— Marla Hohner (@marlahohner) June 2, 2023

According to Daily Mail, Chief Curator Leigh Rifenburg for the Delaware Historical Association revealed that the claim made by the president was unlikely.

“To be safe, we searched the full range of dates from 1960 to 1965. It does seem extraordinarily unlikely that an appointment would have been made in 1965, given President Biden’s years of enrollment at the University of Delaware. Still, we wanted to be thorough,” Rifenburg said.