Biden Slammed by New Plagiarism Scandal

On Tuesday democratic Presidential hopeful Joe Biden was accused of plagiarizing large sections of his environmental plan. The accusation, originally made by Twitter user  Josh Nelson, certainly made for a bad look for the former Vice President just as his campaign is trying to get off the ground. The worst part? This isn’t the first time Biden has been accused of plagiarism. 
 

The paragraph in Joe Biden’s climate plan about carbon capture and sequestration includes language that is remarkably similar to items published previously by the Blue Green Alliance and the Carbon Capture Coalition.

— Josh Nelson (@josh_nelson) June 4, 2019

In fact, his first Presidential run (all the way back in 1988) was derailed by similar accusations of plagiarism. In 1987 it was revealed that Biden was accused and later admitted to,  plagiarizing a law school paper. At the time he insisted that: ”I was wrong, but I was not malevolent in any way” as well as that he, in spite of being a law student, just didn’t know how to use citations. Of course, this didn’t prevent him from also going on to lift language from politicians like Robert F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphery, also without properly citing them.

Perhaps if “Sleepy Joe” had woken up and paid a bit more attention in class, accusations of plagiarism wouldn’t still be following him around 30 years later. 

Still, in the final analysis, Joe Biden’s chronic plagiarism likely has less to do with his own carelessness and more to do with his entire party’s shaky relationship with the truth. The entire Democratic Party has played fast and loose with the facts for years, so is it really any surprise that their Presidential front runner would do the same? And it seems unlikely this will change anytime soon. As the saying goes: “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”