If President Joe Biden isn’t around to peddle his most pernicious untruths, rest assured he has his votaries in the media to do it for him — yes, even at Fox News.
In a further erosion of what little credibility he may have left, Juan Williams — formerly a token liberal on “The Five,” currently just a general-issue political analyst with the network — repeated one of the president’s most reprehensible lies on “Fox News Sunday”: President Biden’s son Beau died in Iraq.
Williams made the claim during an apologia for the president’s decision to adamantly stick by son Hunter Biden’s own obvious untruths regarding his foreign business practices, including those that found him charged with nine crimes related to his failure to pay taxes on millions he took in.
The claim came after one of the panelists pointed out that while President Biden has long called for Americans who earn more to pay their fair share, “the president has said specifically about his son that he never did anything wrong.”
“Right, well, I think that’s his son,” Williams said, adding that Hunter Biden “had drug problems, apparently sex addiction problems.”
“And I think that [Joe Biden] loves his son and lost another son in war,” Williams continued.
“So he’s standing by his son. That’s a family issue.”
Is Joe Biden a liar?
Spoiler alert: Joe Biden did not lose a son in war, no matter how many times he says it. Yes, the president’s life has been marked by both triumph and tragedy — the loss of son Beau Biden, who was a veteran, being part of the tragedy.
Beau Biden died of cancer in 2015. The Iraq War ended in 2011. Nobody on his speech-writing staff, however, seems to have correlated these facts and politely informed the president that there was no way that his son could have died during his time serving in Iraq — something Joe has claimed on multiple occasions, and Williams was echoing.
For instance, here’s Biden bringing it up during a speech in November 2022 in regards to inflation, blaming it on Russia’s war with Iraq [sic] and then saying he had the Iraq War in mind because his son died in it [also sic].
“They talk about inflation … inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil and what Russia’s doing … excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” Biden said in the address. “I’m thinking Iraq because that’s where my son died.”
He’d also made the same claim — albeit with a bit less conservative fact-checking involved — the previous month during a speech in Vail, Colorado. It came as he relayed the story about how the 10th Mountain Division of the U.S. Army trained in the area to take on Germany in World War II.
“Facing high altitudes and harsh terrain, deep snow, bitter cold, soldiers at Camp Hale learned to scale rock, ski, and survive, preparing for the war they were about to fight,” he said.
“That pivotal moment came, as the senator pointed out, in February 1945: a surprise Allied attack in the mountains of Italy. Imagine, it’s pitch black, punishing cold. The mission, high in the mountains, that hinged on the skill, strength, and stamina that could have only been gained in a place like this.”
“Just imagine — and I mean this sincerely. I say this as a father of a man who won the Bronze Star, the Conspicuous Service Medal, and lost his life in Iraq,” he continued. “Imagine the courage, the daring, and the genuine sacrifice — genuine sacrifice they all made.”
In his more truthful (or lucid, depending on how you view Biden’s untruth about the manner of his son’s death) moments he has — as The New York Times quite politely put it — “speculated that his son Beau developed brain cancer because of exposure to burn pits when he served in Iraq.”
There’s no medical evidence to support this speculation, mind you — the correlation between burn pits and the type of cancer that killed him being significantly less extant than that linking Agent Orange exposure among Vietnam War veterans to adverse health conditions — but at least this acknowledges that Beau Biden didn’t die in Iraq of war-related causes. At other moments, he’s either lied or forgotten about the manner of his son’s death. Neither presents a good augury.
Williams is not a man in obvious mental decline, however, nor is he known for the level of mendacity attributable to one Joseph Robinette Biden, however. I’m not saying candor or honesty is the man’s strong suit — you just saw the clip, after all — but Williams is neither senescent nor a compulsive liar.
What Williams is, however, is a man who knows the party line. It’s almost like he gets an emailed memo from the Democratic National Committee every morning telling him which talking points they’re peddling today. On Sunday, it was that the president is standing by his son because of the tremendous loss he’s suffered in his life — and if you have to tell a few lies to blandish the point, go right ahead. Nobody’s going to call anyone out on this and look unsympathetic, right?
Shame on Williams for perpetuating this untruth — and for the “Fox News Sunday” crew for letting it slide.
