Biden is accused of repeating long-running lie in commencement address at West Point military academy

President Biden has been accused of repeating a long running lie that he was appointed to a Naval Academy in 1965.

The president had been delivering the commencement speech at the Military Academy at West Point, New York, when he made the remarks to 1,036 cadets.

During the ceremony, Biden told the crowd of graduates that he had been 'appointed' to the Naval Academy. 

Biden said: 'I was appointed by a fella I ran against when I was 29-years-old to the Naval Academy. I was one of ten, I wanted to play football.

'The day I was supposed to go down for the interview, a class mate of mine who was also one of the ten appointed to be chosen from.' 

The president had been delivering the commencement speech at the Military Academy at West Point, New York, when he made the remarks to some 1,000 cadets

Biden continued: 'He came to pick me up, I found out two days earlier that they had a quarterback named Roger Staubach and a halfback named Joe Bellino. I said oh I'm not going there, I went to Delaware.' 

Biden had previously made this same claim while addressing graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy in 2022. 

Biden said that Delaware Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, who he ran against in 1972, had tried to get him into the Annapolis school seven years previously.  

The New York Post reported at the time that curators for the Delaware Historical Association went 'box-by-box' searching for Academy nominations. 

Chief curator Leigh Rifenburg had told the outlet that the claim made by the president was 'unlikely'. 

At the time, Rifenburg: 'Our staff devoted a large chunk of last week to this project. 

'We hauled and sorted through a few dozen boxes from the relevant years, which proved to be a needle-in-a-haystack proposition, as we feared.'

'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 matriculation at the University of Delaware, but we wanted to be thorough,' she continued.

'We were unable to find appointments for entry in 1961, 1963, 1964, or 1965,' Rifenburg added.

Graduating cadets listen as President Joe Biden speaks at the U.S. Military Academy commencement ceremony, Saturday, May 25, 2024, in West Point, N.Y

During the ceremony, Biden told the crowd of graduates that he had been 'appointed' to the Naval Academy

Also during his speech on Saturday, the president staggered through one sentence when talking about Putin and NATO. 

He said: 'Putin was certain that NATO would fracture right after I was sworn in. We talked about this very issue. 

'The fall, he tied, that fall he decided, look I shouldn't get into this probably. But it gets me a little excited.' 

Since clips of the speech of him fumbling his words and mentioning the Naval Academy emerged on social media, the president was criticized online. 

One person posted: 'Keep him home, Jill. You're embarrassing your husband, allowing vulnerabilities in America and revealing the wife you are not. Pathetic behavior.'

Another posted: 'Another day, another lie from Biden. When will the left stop making excuses for this man's blatant dishonesty?'

While one other said: 'Did anyone have 'Briben says he was appointed to the Naval Academy' on their bingo card?'

Biden presents a diploma to a graduate cadet during the United States Military Academy commencement

The president used his speech to emphasize the critical role of US support to allies around the world including Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific.

Gaffes aside, the president used his speech to emphasize the critical role of US support to allies around the world including Israel, Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific. 

Biden described American soldiers as 'working around the clock' to support Ukraine in its effort to repel a two-year long Russian invasion, but repeated his commitment to keeping them off the front lines.

'We are standing strong with Ukraine and we will stand with them,' Biden told the crowd to a round of applause.

He also highlighted the U.S. role in repelling Iranian missile attacks against Israel and support for allies in the Indo-Pacific against increasing Chinese militarism in the region.

'Thanks to the U.S. Armed Forces, we're doing what only America can do as the indispensable nation, the world's only superpower,' Biden said.

As vice president, he twice addressed a graduating class of cadets at the academy about 40 miles north of New York City, but this was the first time as president.

Donald Trump, Biden's Republican challenger in the 2024 election, was the last president to speak at a West Point commencement, in 2020.