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On Wednesday night, during the Vice Presidential debate, Vice President Mike Pence accused Joe Biden of plagiarism. The topic came up while Pence was talking about Joe Biden’s plan to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, and accused the Biden campaign of copying from the White House’s plan.
“The… plan reads a lot like what President Trump and I have done every step of the way,” Pence said. “It looks a lot like plagiarism which is something Biden knows a little bit about.”
So has Biden been accused of plagiarism in the past? Yes, he has. Biden’s first presidential campaign was dogged by accusations of plagiarism, and his 2020 campaign recently admitted to using phrases without attribution from various nonprofit organizations.
Here’s what you need to know:
Biden Was Accused of Plagiarism in 1987, & He Admitted Making ‘Mistakes’
Pence on the Biden plan: “it looks a little bit like plagiarism, which is something Joe Biden knows a little bit about.”
In 1987, Biden ended his first presidential campaign amid claims that he had plagiarized bits of a speech from a British politician. Per the Washington Post, this initial accusation of plagiarism soon developed into multiple accusations against numerous speeches. Additionally, a video clip of Biden allegedly exaggerating his academic record surfaced as well.
Following the accusations, Biden said, “I made some mistakes. But now, the exaggerated shadow of those mistakes has begun to obscure the essence of my candidacy and the essence of Joe Biden.”
Then, in June 2019, another of Biden’s presidential runs was slapped with a plagiarism accusation. Specifically, the Biden campaign was accused of lifting certain phrases from nonprofit companies without any attribution. One such example, via the Post, could be seen in Biden’s climate plan. Part of the plan read in part: “widely available, cost-effective, and rapidly scalable solution to reduce carbon emissions to meet mid-century climate goals.”
This phrase was quite similar to one found on the website for the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions’s Carbon Capture Coalition: “[Our] goal is to make carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) a widely available, cost-effective, and rapidly scalable solution to reduce carbon emissions to meet mid-century climate goals.”
This is a developing post and will be updated.