Biden Appropriates Joke Reagan Previously Delivered at Coast Guard Academy Graduation and Flubs It
President Joe Biden, who has a history of lifting passages from other politicians’ speeches, apparently did so again on Wednesday in his commencement address at the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut, borrowing a line from then-President Ronald Reagan’s speech on the same occasion 33 years prior.
“My Coast Guard aides have been excellent. One of them taught me that, and I quote, ‘The Coast Guard is that hard nucleus about which the Navy forms in time of war,'” Reagan joked to the delight of the academy cadets and their family and friends on-hand in May 1988.
Watch the former Hollywood actor’s delivery at roughly the 5-minute mark below.
Things did not go quite so swimmingly for Biden on Wednesday as he sought to appropriate Reagan’s words and deliver what he thought would surely be a money line.
Biden began it with a chuckle, saying, “I can only assume that you’ll enjoy educating your family about how the Coast Guard is, quote, ‘The hard nucleus around the Navy forms in times of war.'”
He flubbed the joke enough that it drew no response, for which Biden chastised the cadets.
“You’re a really dull class. I mean, come on, man. Is the sun getting to you?” the commander in chief said with some agitation in his voice.
“I would think you’d have an opportunity when I say that about the Navy to clap,” Biden added, which drew some applause.
Biden’s penchant for lifting lines is well documented.
In fact, it was during his first presidential run back in 1987 that he was caught taking lengthy portions of speeches from British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock and former U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy without giving attribution.
That same year, Biden also admitted he plagiarized in a paper he submitted while a student at Syracuse University Law School in the 1960s, The Washington Post reported.
In that instance, he went big, lifting five pages from a law review article without citation. The school required Biden to redo the course.
Biden ended his presidential campaign in disgrace shortly after these revelations.
During his latest run, Biden’s campaign was accused of not crediting sources in passages contained in his climate change plan.
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After the incident, the campaign spent $4,200 on anti-plagiarism software, according to the New York Post.
However, the U.K. Daily Mail reported this precaution did not prevent Biden from delivering lines that sounded “suspiciously similar” to those of former Canadian member of Parliament Jack Layton during the former Delaware senator’s Democratic National Convention speech last summer.
Biden clearly has a problem in this area of “borrowing” other people’s words.
Reagan vs. Biden delivering the same joke to the U.S. Coast Guard academy ?? pic.twitter.com/d984ZOVqCH
— Lyndsey Fifield (@lyndseyfifield) May 19, 2021
If you’re going to take from the “Great Communicator” Ronald Reagan, for crying out loud give attribution and deliver the line well.
“Come on, man!”
