Biden repeats lie about being the first in his family to go to college — decades after admitting it’s not true
President Biden has repeated a lie that he was the first person in his family to attend college — more than three decades after first admitting it’s not true.
The oldest-ever president repeated the untrue claim while touting his efforts to bail out student loan borrowers during a stop Monday at a college in the swing state of Wisconsin.
“I, like an awful lot of people in this audience, was the first in my family to go to college and watched my dad struggle to get there,” he said.
Biden, 81, has been called out several times before for making the same claim.
He acknowledged it was untrue more than 35 years ago when his 1987 presidential campaign unraveled in a plagiarism scandal that saw him lift remarks from a British politician.
Confronted about plagiarism and a number of inaccurate statements at the time, Biden acknowledged to the New York Times in 1987 that “there are Finnegans, my mother’s family, that went to college.”
Biden’s father also attended the prestigious Johns Hopkins University for one year, the York Daily Record reported in 2020, citing Census records. A 1941 wedding announcement in the Scranton Tribune said the president’s dad “attended Johns Hopkins University.”
Biden has also spoken lovingly of his maternal grandfather, Ambrose Joseph Finnegan, calling him an “All-American football player” for Santa Clara College in California in a 2022 speech.
An obituary for his grandfather also acknowledges he enrolled in Santa Clara College after graduating from high school in Scranton, Pa.
“A star athlete, he gained nationwide recognition for his feats while quarterback of the Santa Clara football team,” it said.
The obituary goes on to note that Finnegan graduated from the college and took a job in the real estate industry.
Even so, Biden has more than once made the same claim about being the first member of his family to go to college, including during a CNN town hall when he was running for president in 2020, according to the Washington Times. “Biden resurrected an old lie,” the Trump campaign wrote at the time.
Republicans were quick to point out the inconsistencies after Biden made his remarks in Wisconsin on Monday, with Greg Price, communications director for the State Freedom Caucus Network, blasting the president on X for lying.
Tim Murtaugh, a columnist for the Washington Times, also wrote that “it’s sad that it has to be pointed out that Biden cannot be the first in his family to attend college, while also having a grandfather who played college football.”
In a statement to The Post, a spokesman for the White House said the president “is proud to be the first Biden to graduate college.”
