Described as “lightly edited” by TIME, the transcript from President Joe Biden’s exclusive foreign policy-focused interview with the magazine is still a mess of confused statements, mistaken assertions, and flat-out falsehoods — according to a fact-check published concurrently by TIME. What the outlet published again confirms why Biden and the White House insist that the tapes from his classified documents interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur are never available to the public. It should also scare his campaign team ahead of Biden’s debates with former President Donald Trump.
“For example, the idea that if when Putin decided to go into Russia,” Biden said at one point before correcting himself. “I mean, he’s gonna go from Russia into Ukraine—the reason why I cleared the intelligence so we can release the information we knew that he was going to attack, was to let the world know we were still in charge.” Biden conveniently omitted — and TIME did not raise — the Biden administration’s intelligence sharing with the Chinese Communist Party in a failed attempt to have Beijing talk Putin out of invading.
Biden repeatedly mixed up Russia with Ukraine throughout his comments on the subject. He also mixed up Iraq and Iran at points, including his refutation of “the idea that you had nuclear arsenals in Iran, that were being, I mean, in Iraq…” At another point, Biden confused Taiwan with South Korea. Biden also said that America has “the strongest alliance in all of America,” before correcting his claim to “all of history.”
The interview also saw Biden trail off a number of times, ending an assertion about being “on a slippery slope for war if we don’t do something about Ukraine” with “It’s just not gonna…anyway…,” according to TIME’s transcript.
When asked about Israel’s prosecution of the war started by Hamas on October 7, Biden said “I’m not going to respond to that because I’m about to make a…anyway.” He’s about to make a anyway, folks.