Biden's fictional tales fact-checked by WaPo, NY Times but outlets stop short of declaring them 'lies'

President Biden has raised eyebrows in recent weeks for telling an embellished story to the survivors of the Maui wildfires and while addressing Hurricane Idalia in an attempt to relate to people's struggles. But news outlets have found creative ways to refer to the president's questionable stories and even outright fabrications. 

This story, as he's told it, entails what he suggests was a near-catastrophic fire that occurred at his home in 2004 due to a lightning strike, repeatedly claiming he "almost lost" his wife, cat and ’67 Corvette in the event.

Reports at the time, however, reveal that the fire was contained to only the kitchen. 

This caught the attention of Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who wrote a story Thursday with the headline, "Biden loves to retell certain stories. Some aren’t credible."

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"Biden’s propensity to exaggerate or embellish tales about his life led to doubts about his truthfulness. Contemporary news reports on the house fire do not match his telling of it, fanning criticism that he had lied to a vulnerable audience," Kessler wrote. "Sometimes the stories turn out to be largely true… But others fall short. As president, Biden has continued a tradition of embellishing his personal tales in ways that cannot be verified or are directly refuted by contemporary accounts."

Kessler's report compiled several of Biden's tall tales like one about his pal Amtrak conductor who he claimed congratulated him on having traveled more than 2 million miles on the railroad, exceeding the 1.2 million miles traveled on Air Force planes as vice president as of 2016. Yet the conductor had retired in 1993 and died two years before Biden reached that milestone in the air. 

Other tales that were addressed include Biden's curious claim that he and his father saw two men in suits kissing each other in public when he was a teenager, that he was arrested for trying to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and how as VP he arranged for his uncle to be presented a Purple Heart he was owed and never received, except the uncle died in 1999, long before Biden was vice president. 

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But while Kessler acknowledged the criticism towards Biden that he "lied" about these tales, Kessler himself didn't make that leap nor did he offer any of the Post's "Pinocchios," a move managing editor Curtis Houck of the conservative media watchdog NewsBusters called "predictable."

"It's been either a hands-off approach or a cowardly, mealymouthed explaining away of what Biden actually meant or that his lies and tall tales were innocent mistakes," Houck told Fox News Digital. 

The New York Times ran a similar report last October under the headline "Biden, Storyteller in Chief, Spins Yarns That Often Unravel," telling readers how the president "has been unable to break himself of the habit of embellishing narratives to weave a political identity."

Like the Post, the Times used the fire story, which he told to survivors of Hurricane Ian, as a launching pad to delve into his "exaggerated biography" and times that he "shaved off" the "factual edges."

"The exaggerated biography that Mr. Biden tells includes having been a fierce civil rights activist who was repeatedly arrested. He has claimed to have been an award-winning student who earned three degrees. And last week, speaking on the hurricane-devastated island of Puerto Rico, he said he had been ‘raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically,’" the Times wrote. "For more than four decades, Mr. Biden has embraced storytelling as a way of connecting with his audience, often emphasizing the truth of his account by adding, 'Not a joke!' in the middle of a story. But Mr. Biden’s folksiness can veer into folklore, with dates that don’t quite add up and details that are exaggerated or wrong, the factual edges shaved off to make them more powerful for audiences."

The Times offered some transparency in the double standard it gives between Biden and former President Trump when it comes to their fact-checking. In its report, the Times said Trump "lied constantly" while "Biden's fictions are nowhere near that scale" but that his loose facts "provide political ammunition for Republicans eager to tar him as too feeble to run for re-election."

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Dean Baquet, the paper's now-retired executive editor, once called for the term "lie" to be used "judiciously" since it had such a "very powerful" meaning, cautioning that using the word too often "could feed the mistaken notion that we’re taking political sides. That’s not our role."

Except the Times hasn't hesitated to call Trump's false claims "lies" in headlines, particularly regarding the 2020 election. The Post also has used the "L" word in several headlines about the former president.

Kessler himself spearheaded a tracker dedicated to monitoring all of Trump's false or misleading claims while in office, a practice that was never done for the current president. 

Fox News contributor Joe Concha told Fox News Digital that since the media "set the precedent" of declaring lies during the Trump years, the same should be applied to the current president. 

"What is a lie? It's when you intentionally mislead people. And in Joe Biden's case, the excuse always is, 'Oh, well, you know, he's 80 years old, and he doesn't have his fastball like he used to. So he's just confused,'" Concha said. "He tells these stories over and over again… It's either to get votes or to spin a narrative that obviously is not true. But again, when you know that it isn't true, then yes, you use the ‘L’ word."

Concha, who authored the book "Come On, Man!: The Truth About Joe Biden's Terrible, Horrible, No-Good, Very Bad Presidency," called out other media fact-checkers including PolitiFact, Snopes and CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale, who he accused of being on a "siesta spring break for the past two-and-a-half years." He also stressed White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, should also face the same scrutiny. 

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The Federalist's Mark Hemingway similarly questioned why the media hasn't applied the standard to a "world-class liar" like Biden, drawing attention to his repeated denials that he never spoke to his son Hunter about his foreign business dealings. 

"Time and again, the default assumption for Trump is corrupt motives, where Biden gets the benefit of the doubt to an absurd degree. The idea that it was necessary to call Trump a liar in no way precludes doing the same to Biden who is a world-class liar in his own right. However, if the press were to take the most obvious reading of Biden’s motives, they would have to conclude that the man is a corrupt and brazen liar," Hemingway wrote Thursday.

He later continued, "Ultimately, it’s hard to tell whether voters have decided Biden’s lies don’t matter when so many people are working to obscure them. But heading into 2024, it does provide a simple litmus test for who to take seriously. Shouting ‘What about Trump?’ is not an acceptable way to avoid acknowledging the obvious extent of Biden’s corruption and his rank dishonesty about it. And anyone who is unwilling to plainly state that Biden’s a particularly troubling liar is someone who is putting politics over facts, and they cannot be trusted."

In response to Fox News Digital's inquiry, a spokesperson for The Washington Post pointed to a 2018 fact-check Kessler authored explaining how the paper determines to use the term "lie." The report thoroughly debunked Trump's past claims that he had no knowledge of the 2016 hush money payment that was made to Stormy Daniels, the porn star who alleged she had an affair with him, a claim he denied. Kessler concluded that Trump "lied" about the hush money payment based on new revelations at the time. However, it is unclear based on that report whether the Post has a specific standard to determine what false claims from a president amounts to a "lie."

The New York Times did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.

"President Biden has brought honesty and integrity back to the Oval Office," deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates told the Post last week. "Like he promised, he gives the American people the truth right from the shoulder and takes pride in being straight with the country about his agenda and his values; including by sharing life experiences that have shaped his outlook and that hard-working people relate to. And as Americans know, there are countless moments from every person’s own history that are not covered in local newspapers."

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