Fact Check: Did Joe Biden accuse Donald Trump of legalizing corruption?
WASHINGTON, DC: An online post claims to show an exchange between former President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Marco Rubio in which Biden accused President Donald Trump of legalizing corruption. The claim has triggered a debate and questions about its authenticity, prompting a fact-check.
Claim: Joe Biden accused Donald Trump of legalizing corruption
The claim surfaced on X, showing a heated exchange between Biden and Rubio, where Rubio said, “Americans have never had an honest president like Donald Trump."
Biden then appears to agree with Rubio, allegedly stating, “Yes, absolutely.” He then goes on to say, “When I was president, my son made $225 thousand a year, but his son earned $7.5 billion. He actually made corruption legalized."
The post has garnered more than a hundred thousand views as of this writing, with many appearing to believe the exchange is real, while some side with the former president and others slam him.
Meanwhile, a few others remained skeptical and questioned the authenticity of the viral claim.
Fact Check: No such exchange took place
However, the claim is fake and fabricated, as no reports of such an exchange between the State Secretary and the former president exist.
Searches on both their social media handles also yielded no results supporting the statement. An additional Google search also returned no results, which, if true, would have been widely covered by prominent news media outlets.
A fact-check by Grok stated, “There is no record of a real exchange where Rubio made the specific praise of Trump and Biden replied with the quoted lines about family earnings and legalized corruption.”
Jill Biden gives update about Joe Biden's cancer battle
The claim surfaced after the former First Lady, Jill Biden, shared an update about Biden's deteriorating health.
“We can’t look at life that way... We look at it like, ‘Joe has cancer. He’s gonna die, so let’s make the most of every moment,’” the former First Lady said.
“Of course I’m scared,” she stated. “I mean, first of all, he’s almost 10 years older than I am. And with an illness ... you kinda can’t let your head go there.”
“It’s like, you can’t imagine life without them. But you know they’re going to die, just like I know I’m going to die,” she said, adding, “So part of it, you accept.”
Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of stage four prostate cancer, and the diagnosis was announced by his office on May 18 last year, noting that the cancer had metastasized to his bones.
