Frail and debilitated, dazed and confused, mumbling and incoherent, President Joe Biden’s dismal verbal and cognitive performance in his first debate against the former, and as now seems increasingly likely, future President Donald J. Trump, by itself proves that Biden is almost certainly incapable of serving another term and, in some minds, unlikely even to make it to the end of his current one.

But even allowing for the devastating impression he left on the world, the nation, and, according to widespread reports, his party, the content of what he said—to the extent that it was intelligible—was so riddled with falsehoods that American voters should consider his lies while contemplating their votes for November.

Don’t look for that observation in the mainstream media, which devoted the fateful morning after to gaslighting the public with the false notion that only Trump was lying. “Biden Stumbles in Debate as Trump Spread Falsehoods,” hedged the financially and reputationally troubled Washington Post. “Former President Trump’s attacks were frequently false,” concurred the New York Times, once the paper of record, even as four of its leading columnists—Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman, Frank Bruni, and Nicholas Kristof—wrote lengthy op-eds imploring Biden to withdraw from the race. Politico derided Biden for turning in “the worst debate performance in American history,” but still opined that Trump was “spewing a series of lies” when he challenged the Democratic incumbent.  “It’s hard to debate a liar,” said Biden himself when asked what he thought of his own debate performance. ABC News assiduously fact-checked 17 of Trump’s claims but only four of Biden’s claims.

Like their allies at the Times, who reported the sometimes amusing disappointment among those watching Biden debate, top Democrats are reportedly wondering whether it is time for Biden to be replaced. Whatever their deeply troubled side of the aisle decides, the fact remains that the president was the one spreading falsehoods in a desperate effort to show up Trump and save his sagging candidacy.

To begin with his most outrageous claim, Biden denied that any U.S. servicemen have been lost on his watch. “The truth is, I’m the only president this century, this decade, that doesn’t have any troops dying anywhere in the world,” he sputtered. This is patently untrue. During Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, thirteen servicemen—eleven Marines, one Navy corpsman, and one Army special operations soldier—were needlessly killed in a suicide bombing during the rush to abandon Bagram airbase. The families of those fallen heroes will never be the same, even if Biden failed to admit (or remember) their loss. But neither will the families of two U.S. SEALS killed in Yemen last October and three Army personnel killed in an Iranian-aligned militia’s attack on a base in Jordan in January. In November 2023, 13 other servicemen were killed in two unrelated accidents—five soldiers in the Eastern Mediterranean and eight airmen in Japan. That’s a total of 31 lost lives the president lied about before an international audience. With hundreds more servicemen wounded and injured since 2021—and six U.S. citizens still held hostage by Hamas in Gaza—his lie further underscores the fundamental fact that Americans are greatly more vulnerable to fatal attack under his abysmal leadership.  

Biden lied again when he declared that no terrorists have crossed the severely compromised southern border under his leadership. “The only terrorist who has done anything crossing the border,” the president said, “is one who came along and killed three—in [Trump’s] administration.” Biden’s own Department of Homeland Security—led by the recently impeached Alejandro Mayorkas—disagrees with him, however. In a report released just two days before the debate, DHS announced that an ISIS-linked network has smuggled over 400 “subjects of concern” across the southern border, more than 50 of whom remain unaccounted for. In fiscal years 2022 and 2023, some 381 individuals on the U.S. terrorist watch list were apprehended in the United States after arriving illegally, in some case after spending long periods of time at large due to lax immigration enforcement. Just last month, two Jordanian nationals, who were illegally present in the country, attempted to infiltrate and then force their way into the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, in what Biden’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement described as a possible “dry run for ISIS or Al Qaeda.” Terrorists are already among us, and Biden lied about that, too.

To add insult to injury, Biden claimed that the National Border Patrol Union endorsed him, or at the very least his position on the border. In an X post now viewed nearly 26 million times, however, the National Border Patrol Union stated—while the debate was still in progress—“to be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”

Biden’s political future may be in doubt. But no matter what becomes of him, he can rest assured that his lies will never be exposed by the self-appointed guardians of “Our Democracy™.” Our country is and will continue to be more dangerous as a result.