Fact-Checking 3 Biden Claims From First Post-Presidential Speech

In his return to the spotlight, former President Joe Biden made unusual claims about both Social Security and race when speaking Tuesday in Chicago.

Biden’s speech to the Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled Conference was his first major address since leaving office in January. 

Here are three unusual points the 46th president made that warrant a closer look. 

1. ‘Never Seen Hardly Any Black People’

The one-term president had professed during his successful 2020 campaign that he was raised in the black church—though he didn’t specify an age—and said he worked with black people in the “projects,” because “these were the guys I grew up with.”

In his Chicago address Tuesday, the 82-year-old Biden said that until the fourth grade, he didn’t see anyone who was “colored,” a term rarely used in modern times. 

“I had never seen hardly any black people in Scranton [Pennsylvania] at the time,” Biden said. “I was only in the fourth grade. I remembered seeing kids going by at the time—called ‘colored kids’—on a bus going by.”

In January 2020, Biden spoke at a Des Moines, Iowa, event, where he said, “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  said in Des Moines. “When I got into politics, I was the only white guy working on the east side, in the projects, because these were the guys I grew up with. These were the guys I worked with.”

In January 2023, Biden spoke in Atlanta, where he said, “I may be a practicing Catholic, but [I] used to go to 7:30 Mass every morning in high school and then in college before I went to the black church. Not a joke.”

In Philadelphia last July, Biden made similar comments in Philadelphia, where he specified, “Across the way, in Delaware, I attended morning Mass in my church and headed to Sunday services at a black church, as I said early on.” 

It’s not completely clear the Chicago comment about not seeing blacks in his youth is inconsistent with comments about growing up in black churches. It would likely depend on the timeline, which is not specific in the stories he recounts. For instance, in at least one occasion, Biden said he attended the black churches in high school and college, which would clearly be long after the fourth grade.

2. ‘Imagine the Panic’ 

On Social Security, Biden accused the Trump administration and the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency of seeking to gut the program for retired Americans. 

“If you are retired, imagine the panic that causes if you are a retiree living alone with only Social Security to depend upon,” the former president said. 

Biden further said, “For the first and only time in history, Social Security benefits may be delayed or interrupted.”

“In the 90 years since Franklin Roosevelt created the Social Security system, people have always gotten their Social Security checks,” Biden said. “They’ve gotten them during war time, during recessions, during a pandemic—no matter what, they got them. But now, for the first time ever, that might change. It would be a calamity for millions of families, millions of people.”

The Social Security Administration said in a thread on X, “Former President Joe Biden is lying to Americans.” 

DOGE is led by entrepreneur Elon Musk—owner of Tesla, SpaceX, and the social media company X. Musk has said targeting waste and bureaucratic bloat in the program would not affect benefits to recipients. 

“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending—which is most of the federal spending is entitlements. So, that’s, like, the big one to eliminate,” Musk said of eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the Social Security Administration during a Fox News interview. “That’s the, sort of half-trillion, maybe $600 to $700 billion a year.”

Trump, as a candidate in the Republican primaries in the 2016 election cycle, clashed with conservatives in the primary field who insisted on the need for entitlement reforms. In the 2024 primary cycle, Trump again criticized one of his opponents who supported entitlement reforms. 

In a Fox News interview on March 9, Trump said, “I’m not going to touch Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. Now, we’re going to get fraud out of there … and everybody wants us to get the fraud out.”

During a Cabinet meeting in February, a reporter asked the president, “Can you guarantee Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security will not be touched?”

Trump replied, “I’ve said it so many times that you shouldn’t even be asking me that question. This will not be ‘read my lips.’ We’re not going to touch it. Now, we are going to look for fraud, I’m sure you’re OK with that, like people that shouldn’t be on.”

The “read my lips,” is a historical reference to former President George H.W. Bush signing a tax increase into law despite a 1988 campaign pledge of “Read my lips, no new taxes.”

3. ‘So Much Destruction’

Biden made other specific claims in his speech about staffing at the Social Security Administration. 

“In fewer than 100 days, this new administration, they have done so much damage and so much destruction,” he said. “It’s kind of breathtaking that it could happen that soon. They’ve taken a hatchet to the Social Security Administration, pushing out 7,000 employees—7,000—out the door in that time, including the most seasoned officials.”

Biden’s characterizations of “damage” and “destruction” would be a matter of opinion. However, he is partially correct about the numbers.

On Feb. 28, the Social Security Administration announced in a press release that its plan was to reduce staffing from 57,000 to 50,000. 

“The agency plans to reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure, with a significant focus on functions and employees who do not directly provide mission critical services,” the press release said. “Social Security recently set a staffing target of 50,000, down from the current level of approximately 57,000 employees. Rumor of a 50% reduction is false.”

Biden’s assertion the employees are already “out the door” is an apparent stretch. The agency’s press release did not specify the timeline for the reduction in force, but said it would come through the “deferred resignation program” in place earlier this year that allowed federal employees to resign and still collect pay and benefits through September, which is the end of the federal government’s fiscal year. Other reductions would come through early retirements and a “voluntary separation incentive payment” program, according to the agency. 

Biden further said the Social Security Administration website is unworkable. 

“Thousands of people use the Social Security website every single day to check on their benefits and submit their claims,” he said. “But now, the technology division of the Social Security Administration has been cut in half. So the website is crashing.” 

One X post from the Social Security Administration noted that the agency did eliminate 50% of the technology department, as Biden said. 

However, the “MySSA” website portal reportedly had five outages during the month of March.

In an April 8 post on X, the Social Security Administration said the outages had nothing to do with DOGE. 

“SSA website went down because of atypical high volume, and it’s a 1979 platform,” the post said. “It had nothing to do with DOGE. In fact, this problem has alerted to an issue that DOGE will promptly fix.”

The post Fact-Checking 3 Biden Claims From First Post-Presidential Speech appeared first on The Daily Signal.