OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 11:10 AM PT — Sunday, January 19, 2020
2020 Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden said the Bernie
Sanders campaign “flat out lied” by posting videos that questioned the
former vice president’s record on Social Security. At Saturday’s town
hall event in Iowa, Biden called out the Sanders campaign for posting
what he believes are “doctored” videos of him supporting cuts to Social
Security.
“My stance on Social Security…Let’s
get the record straight: I’m not going to blame anybody, but…there’s a
little doctored video going around, put out by Bernie’s people, saying
that I agreed with Paul Ryan on wanting to privatize Social Security. It
is simply a lie. That video that’s going around…ask anybody in the
press, it’s a flat lie.”
– Joe Biden, former Vice President of the United States
Earlier this month, a member of the Sanders campaign posted a series
of videos of Biden from his time as a senator, where he appeared to
support cutting Social Security spending.Although the videos do not seem to be edited, the former vice president insisted the clips were doctored. He added he wants the Sanders campaign to “disown” the videos.
Officials responded hours later, but not in the way Biden had hoped. The Sanders campaign manager stood by their decision to post the videos and stated, “Joe Biden should be honest with voters.”
At that same event, Biden mistakenly claimed a political fact-checking website had backed up his stance. In a newsletter sent to Bernie Sanders’ supporters earlier this month, his campaign claimed “in 2018, Biden lauded Paul Ryan for proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare.”
The website, PolitiFact, ultimately determined this statement was false and said Biden appeared to be mocking Ryan rather than praising him. However, they did not determine if the videos shared by the Sanders campaign were doctored, which disproved Biden’s original claims from the town hall event.
“PolitiFact looked at it and they doctored the photo,” said the former vice president. “They doctored the piece and they have acknowledged it was a fake.”
It appears Biden confused PolitiFact’s analysis of the statement, made about him supporting Paul Ryan in the Sanders campaign newsletter, with the series of videos released by Sanders’ staff.
Biden and Sanders have been going head to head in the polls ahead of the Iowa caucus in February. The latest poll from RealClear Politics showed Biden with 20.7 percent and Sanders with 20.3 percent.
