Article incorrectly quotes Joe Biden on election campaign and Vietnam War
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The claim: Biden said he was running for president to “reduce the prospect of war in Vietnam”
An Instagram post from June 20 (direct link, archive link) contains an excerpt from an interview with President Joe Biden in the Oval Office that was originally posted on X, formerly Twitter.
“Joe Biden just said he is running to reduce the prospect of war in Vietnam,” the text of the X-post reads. “Yes, Vietnam.”
The post received more than 3,000 likes in one day.
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Our rating: False
The post misquotes Biden, who said in response to a question about his legacy that one of the reasons he ran for office in the first place was to reduce the prospect of war “because of” Vietnam — not “in” the Southeast Asian country. He also makes it clearer in the interview that he is referring to his run for a U.S. Senate seat in 1972 — during the Vietnam War — and not the presidency in 2024.
Article misquotes Biden’s answer to question about his legacy
The April 10 X-Post includes a 49-second clip from Univision’s April 9, 40-minute report on Biden’s interview with the network. The interview covered topics such as immigration and the economy.
But the X-post misquotes one of Biden’s answers.
In the full interview, reporter Enrique Acevedo asks Biden, 81, if he often thinks about his legacy, given the possibility that the 2024 election could be his last political campaign.
“I hope that my legacy is that I kept my word and said I was running to change the lives of ordinary people and to reduce the risk of war, and because of Vietnam,” he said.
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Biden was referring to his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1972, the third year of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the year he turned 30.
“And when I ran, I said that — I was asked why once, when I was 29 years old. They said, ‘That has to be a secret,'” he said. “And I said, ‘Yeah, the secret you have to ask yourself is, ‘What are you willing to lose?’ When you figure out what you’re willing to lose, you’ll have an idea of what you should do.’ And so I hope my legacy is that I was honest and direct and did what I said I was going to do.”
That reaction came minutes after Biden made a separate reference to the 1972 Senate race that was not included in the clip shared with X. The Oval Office walk-and-talk segment began with Biden telling a story about how he “ran for office at 29” and supported labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez’s efforts to unionize farmworkers in Delaware.
Biden’s mental capacity has been the subject of misinformation on social media. USA TODAY has debunked false claims that Biden agreed to resign if he failed a cognitive test and that he was declared “mentally incompetent” to stand trial.
USA TODAY contacted the Instagram and X users who shared the post, but did not receive an immediate response from either.
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