Joe Biden often portrays his relationship with Barack Obama as a close friendship, but there’s little evidence to suggest that their private bond matches the image Biden presents. In a 2010 email from Hunter Biden’s laptop to his father’s personal email account, Joe Biden criticized Obama for lacking “grace.” This exchange occurred after Hunter suggested that Obama had plagiarized Joe’s speeches.
The email in question, dated September 7, 2010, followed a pro-union speech Obama gave in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Hunter noted similarities between Obama’s speech and Joe’s 2008 campaign speeches, hinting that Obama might have borrowed elements from his father’s rhetoric. Joe Biden’s response to this email was a concise, “No grace,” in reference to Obama.
While it’s true that Obama’s line in the speech bore a resemblance to Biden’s previous speeches, it’s worth noting that Joe Biden has a history of plagiarism himself. He was accused of plagiarizing a law review article in his law school paper during his first year of law school. Furthermore, his 1988 presidential campaign faced allegations of plagiarizing a speech by British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock’s speech included the lines, “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?” A few months later, Biden delivered a speech with strikingly similar phrasing, posing similar questions about his own family’s education history.
In addition to these instances, Biden’s 2020 Democratic primary campaign appeared to borrow elements from Bernie Sanders’ platform and featured passages lifted from various websites. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden seemed to draw inspiration from President Trump’s response plan and presented ideas as his own, despite similar actions having already been taken.
Considering Joe Biden’s own history of plagiarism, it’s ironic that he criticized Obama for a lack of “grace” in response to allegations of plagiarism.
