President Biden confusingly declared Wednesday that the U.S. has the lowest inflation rate “in America” and again falsely claimed a role in the civil rights movement — a story he even debunked himself — during a rambling speech in Milwaukee.
Mr. Biden traveled to the largest city in the swing state of Wisconsin to announce $36 million in federal funding to rebuild a bridge that local officials say is inconvenient and unsafe for pedestrians, bicyclists and others in the area.
During his remarks, Mr. Biden bragged about his efforts to lower inflation, which has cooled from record highs in 2022, but still remains higher than when he took office in 2021.
Yet, the president appeared confused about where inflation is being measured.
“Wages are rising faster than prices and now we have among the lowest inflation rates of any country in America,” he told the crowd.
Previously, he has said the U.S. has the lowest rate among the world’s “leading” economies.
Mr. Biden also repeated his claim that he came up through the civil rights movement, even though he himself has admitted that’s not true.
“I was deeply involved initially in the civil rights movement that got me involved to run in the first place,” he told the crowd.
However, Mr. Biden acknowledged in 1987 that he was not engaged in the civil rights movement and never marched for equality.
“During the 1960s, I was, in fact, very concerned about the civil rights movement,” Mr. Biden said during a campaign speech for his 1988 presidential run. “I was not an activist. I worked at an all-Black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, Delaware. I was involved in what they were thinking, in what they were feeling.”
“But I was not out marching. I was not down in Selma. I was not anywhere else,” he said. “I was a suburbanite kid who got a dose of exposure to what was happening to black Americans in my own city.”
Despite his acknowledgment that he was not an activist, he has repeatedly made claims about his efforts to show solidarity with African Americans.
Last summer, during a ceremony to establish a national monument to Emmett Till, whose 1955 murder sparked the civil rights movement, Mr. Biden boasted about his legacy of civil rights advocacy.
In September 2022, Mr. Biden insisted he was “very engaged” in the civil rights movement.
Mr. Biden also has repeatedly suggested that he was arrested during a civil rights demonstration.
“I did not walk in the shoes of generations of students who walked these grounds, but I walked other grounds,” Mr. Biden said in a speech at Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, a historically Black college and university. “Because I’m so damn old, I was there as well.”
“You think I’m kidding? It seems like yesterday was the first time I got arrested,” Mr. Biden said.
PolitiFact has rated this claim false, saying there was no evidence that Mr. Biden was arrested during a civil rights protest, despite his repeated claims.
The Washington Post gave him Four Pinocchios — its harshest rating for untrue claims — for the story, saying “too many elements do not add up.”
Although Mr. Biden has repeated this story at least three times, according to a tally by The Washington Times, he conceded in 2020 he was not arrested, adding to the ever-shifting story.
“I wasn’t arrested, I was stopped. I was not able to move where I wanted to go,” Mr. Biden told CNN.