Democratic presidential nomination front-runner Joe Biden was running away Wednesday from any mea culpa in his latest plagiarism controversy. The former vice president is pointing his finger at his campaign staff for coming up with a climate change plan that wasn’t always original.
Biden blames his staff after being caught plagiarizing again: “Look, they made a mistake, they corrected it, they acknowledged it, and they let me know about it. And the outfits that some of the language came from support the plan.” pic.twitter.com/B2zGnsfkvr
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 5, 2019
”I think you’re going to see from the campaign an acknowledgment of exactly what happened and what it did. You know, it’s uh, I think it’s uh … Look, they made a mistake, they corrected it they acknowledged it, and they let me know about it. And the outfits that some of the language came from support the plan.”
Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden rolls up his sleeve at the start of a campaign rally in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. May 18, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst.
The mistake that his staff made was lifting passages from documents produced by other environmental groups and inserting these into Biden’s plan to fight global warming that he released this week. The $6.7 trillion project is in line with the Green New Deal popularized by New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but is more frugal than the congresswoman’s deal that could reportedly cost $93 trillion over 10 years. (RELATED: Joe Biden 2020 Parody Website Is Tricking People Into Thinking It’s The Real Thing)
U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) hold a news conference for their proposed “Green New Deal” to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 10 years, at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S. Feb. 7, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst.
Biden’s plan utilizes the same prophetic language that “the very livability” of the planet will be in danger “in the next 12 years” if climate change is not addressed.
But it also contains the specific language of groups like the Carbon Capture Coalition. The Daily Caller News Foundation found five specific examples of material used by the Biden campaign that had been used previously by someone else. (RELATED: Joe Biden Tells Europe That America Is ‘An Embarrassment’)
Here’s one example:
Biden: “Biden’s goal is to make CCUS a widely available, cost-effective, and rapidly scalable solution to reduce carbon emissions to meet mid-century climate goals.”
Carbon Capture Coalition: “Its 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.”
Biden was ridiculed in 1987 while he was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. His speech was virtually identical to a Labor Party television ad in which its leader of the time, Neil Kinnock, delivers a robust, populist message of hope for working class voters.
The Kinnock ad: “Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? [Referencing his wife:] 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?”
Joe Biden speech: “I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I’m the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?”