President Joe Biden’s remarks honoring veterans from Europe on Thursday on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion were met with accusations of plagiarism online.
Given the president’s long, documented history of passing off the words of others as his own, it’s little surprise that Biden’s critics focused on his remarks from Collevile-sur-Mer, France.
From Normandy, Biden described the challenges U.S. Army Rangers faced when scaling cliffs at Pointe du Hoc to secure the beaches and make way for other troops to land.
The issue with Biden’s recounting of that harrowing day was that the way he retold it was eerily similar to the way former President Ronald Reagan described the same struggle from the same spot four decades ago.
A viral clip of Biden’s anecdote about the brave Rangers that took a cliff that separated Omaha and Utah beaches – two defensive strongholds that had to be neutralized if Europe was to be freed from Hitler’s military – was juxtaposed alongside almost identical remarks from Reagan.
VIDEO: Biden Plagiarizes Reagan at Normandy pic.twitter.com/gB6BJA5LRq
— The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show (@clayandbuck) June 7, 2024
While both presidents were describing historical events that have not changed in 80 years, the way Biden explained the first battle to free Europe was curiously similar to how Reagan described it.
The president’s cadence and remarks were more than similar to Reagan’s and were called out far and wide on the social media platform X:
Do you think Biden plagiarized Reagan’s speech?
not the first time he plagiarized….
— Roland Rogers 🇺🇸 (@RolandRogers2) June 7, 2024
Those of us who know history remember that Biden had to drop out of a POTUS run due to plagiarism.
He lies, he copies other people’s work as his own, he is nothing but a fake, a phony and a career grifter.
— Believer in Truth, Justice and Freedom (@LagerthaMuadDib) June 7, 2024
It is his brand. pic.twitter.com/Q8QWpfmdq7
— The Doctor (@TennantRob) June 7, 2024
This is surprising to no one.
— HippyDippyCaliGirl (@hippydippygirl) June 7, 2024
Plagiarism isn’t anything new for this guy devoid of any kind of profound intellect. In a way it’s a compliment to Ronald Reagan and his speechwriter in choosing to use the speech knowing his own writers were DEI hires. https://t.co/pRzXcXyae5
— John Ayres (@JohnAyr12294351) June 7, 2024
As was noted online, Thursday was far from the only time Biden had been savaged over remarks that were first made by someone else.
In fact, allegations of plagiarism derailed Biden’s first White House bid when he was forced to drop out of the 1988 election.
As the American Presidency Project noted, the then-Delaware senator’s campaign was under the microscope in 1987 when Biden made a speech that was almost identical to then-Labour Party leader, U.K. politician Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock had previously said during prepared remarks, “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?”
In remarks later at a presidential debate, Biden asked, “Why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?”
The parallels between the speeches continued from there:
Biden also “borrowed” excerpts from a speech that had been made two decades earlier by then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and from his brother, former President John F. Kennedy.
The American Presidency Project lays out decades of instances in which Biden had lifted the words of others and used them without crediting their original source.
But in 1987, Biden ultimately left the presidential race when the parallels between his and Kinnock’s remarks came to define his campaign.
Almost four decades later, the president is still facing heat for borrowing words from others.
