On The Situation Room today, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer made a surprising admission to, of all people, real estate entrepreneur Donald Trump:
BLITZER: What do you think of his (Obama's) decision to pick Joe Biden as his running mate?
TRUMP: I really don't know Senator Biden but I know one thing. He's
run a number of times for president. He's gotten less than 1 percent of
the vote each time. And that's a pretty tough thing. You know, he's
also been involved in pretty big controversy like plagiarism in college
and various other things. That's a pretty big statement. So perhaps you
change over a period of time. But when you plagiarize, that's a very
bad statement. That hasn't been brought up yet, but I'm sure at some
point it will. I'm sure that Sarah Palin will bring it up in a debate
or somebody's going to bring it up.
BLITZER: Are you talking about plagiarism when he was running for president?
TRUMP: No, I'm talking about when he was a college student as I
understand it, and this was a big issue originally but he supposedly
plagiarized as a college student. That's a pretty serious charge.
BLITZER: I don't remember that. We'll check it out. But maybe you obviously have a better memory about that.
While I have no basis to doubt Blitzer's statement, it's difficult
to understand how the anchor, who at times displays an encyclopedic
knowledge on matters political, doesn't know about Biden's law school
plagiarism. The Democratic vice presidential candidate admitted to it
over two decades ago and the incident has been widely covered in recent
weeks.
In August, Associated Press writers Pete Yost and Holbrook Mohr reported:
Biden admitted back in 1987 that he had committed
plagiarism while a freshman at Syracuse University law school and that
he occasionally used other people's words in his speeches without
giving credit.
The Chicago Sun-Times's Carol Felsenthal wrote:
Biden got in trouble in 1965, during his first year in
law school. He wrote a paper in which he lifted five pages verbatim
from the Fordham Law Review. He was given an “F” in the course. He
managed to avoid being bounced from law school, retook the course and
earned a B.
In Slate, David Greenberg's account included:
If that wasn't bad enough, Biden admitted the next day
that while in law school he had received an F for a course because he
had plagiarized five pages from a published article in a term paper
that he submitted.
Earlier this month, Jennifer Fermino of Post Wire Services completed her story on Biden:
He was caught using a passage in his stump speech from
British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock, without attributing it, while
at the Iowa State Fair.
He'd cited Kinnock's words before - and given him his due credit - but for some reason, didn't that time.
Soon after that scandal, new plagiarism allegations surfaced.
Biden had cheated on a law-school paper by cribbing parts of another
work, and he was also caught using parts of a Robert F. Kennedy speech
without citation.
He quit the race shortly after the cheating came to light.
As I said, Biden's plagiarism in law school has been widely
reported. Perhaps this lapse in Blitzer's awareness is attributable to
him depending on CNN for full and complete information. Maybe he
should spend more time talking with Trump.