Nolte: Biden Claim of Being ‘Raised’ in Black Church Doesn’t Hold up to Scrutiny

biden prayer
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

Joe Biden’s disturbing habit of telling audacious lies about his biography took another hit this week when the Washington Free Beacon discovered no one can remember Biden attending a black church he claims to have attended at a teen.

On the campaign trail, Biden has claimed he was “raised” in a black church.

Last year, he said, “I got raised in the black church. We would go sit in Rev. Herring’s church, sit there before we’d go out, and try to change things when I was a kid in college and in high school.”

“I have a lot of black support because that’s where I come from. I was raised in the black church, politically, not a joke,” Biden told the NAACP in January.

The Rev. Herring in the first quote is Rev. Otis Herring, which means the church Biden referred to is the Union Baptist Church in Wilmington, DE. Herring died in 1996, but the Washington Free Beacon reached out to longtime members and they say Biden was not there.

This includes Phyllis Drummond, who, according to the Free Beacon, was “Herring’s longtime assistant who attended Union Baptist for 39 years.” While she was not a member of the church during the time in question, she does not believe “Biden attended at that time.”

“No. Not at our building. I think he was probably in Claymont, [Del.,] [or] in Pennsylvania then,” she told the Free Beacon.

“Juanita Matthew, who joined Union Baptist in the 1970s and has run its affiliated day-care center for decades, said she wasn’t aware of Biden’s attendance as a teenager,” the Free Beacon adds.

Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King has also raised doubts about Biden’s dubious claim of being “raised” in Herring’s black church. Here’s what he claims to have found: [emphasis added]

The Reverend Herring [Biden] speaks of there is the late legendary Reverend Otis Herring of Union Baptist Church in Wilmington. Other times this year when Biden tells this story he says he’d leave mass and go to the late Reverend Maurice Moyer’s church. I spoke to former members of their churches, as well as people close to both families. Neither stories are true. Joe Biden met both of these men much later in life and only learned about their great work in retrospect. Reverends Herring and Moyer were revered in Delaware and Joe Biden is abusing their names and deaths by falsely claiming they were his mentors in 1960. They were not. Four different people in Wilmington expressed to me that these claims of Biden are so outrageous and dishonest that it caused them to truly worry for his mental health.

Over the years, Biden has spun more tales than NBC News anchor Brian Williams. Tales that have either been debunked or impossible to verify.

Biden claimed to have marched for Civil Rights. He didn’t.

Biden claimed to have graduated at the top of his law class. He graduated near the bottom — number 76 out of 85 students.

Biden claimed to be the first person in his family to go to college. He wasn’t.

Biden claimed he attended college on a full academic scholarship. He didn’t.

Biden claimed he graduated with three degrees. He graduated with one.

Biden claimed he immediately opposed the Iraq War. He didn’t.

Biden claimed he called Slobodan Milosevic  a “war criminal” to his face. He didn’t.

Biden claimed the Obama administration did not pull illegal alien children in “cages.” They did.

Biden claimed his wife and daughter were killed by a drunk driver.  The driver was not only sober, he was not responsible for the accident. According to investigators, Biden’s late wife drove into the path of the other driver.

Biden claimed a helicopter he was flying in was “forced down” when touring Afghanistan  near where bin Laden was supposedly holed up. The helicopter landed to wait out a snowstorm.

Biden said he was a coalminer. He wasn’t.

Biden claimed he was “shot at” in Iraq. He wasn’t.

Joe Biden claimed he was arrested in South Africa. He wasn’t.

Biden claims he won’t raise middle class taxes or confiscate guns. You believe him?

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.