President Biden told Air Force Academy graduates Thursday that he almost entered the Naval Academy with a highschool classmate — before deciding at the last minute to prevent it.
Biden, 80, added new details to the latest story after earlier versions of the story were called into query due to his citing an implausible appointment yr in addition to an absence of documentation.
“Once I was graduating from highschool 300 years ago, I applied to the Naval Academy and was elected by a senator,” Biden said at a Colorado school shortly before he collapsed on stage after shaking hands with alumni.
“Senators can select in two ways, you may select individually or they will name 10 people and let the academy select,” Biden said.
“I used to be a comparatively good player so I had a probability,” he continued, implying he was nominated in a 10-man list that was left to the academy to judge.
“And I remember the day a man named Steve Dunning in my class, [who] he was nominated too, he drove up, it was about seven in the morning, we were supposed to go to Annapolis, and I just heard last night that that they had sidekick Joe Bellino, who won the Heisman Trophy, and quarterback Roger Staubach. I went to [the University of] Delaware.
![President Joe Biden](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012054353.jpg?w=1024)
Bellino and Staubach are the only two cadets to win the Heisman Trophy as the top college football players in America. Bellino won in 1960 and Staubach matched the feat in 1963.
Dunning graduated from highschool with Biden in 1961 at Archmere Academy in Delaware, and contacted him by phone from The Post on Thursday.
The retired marketing executive said he remembers the period “pretty much” but declined to comment on Biden’s story.
He didn’t dispute the incontrovertible fact that information on the Web indicated that he had not attended the Naval Academy.
![Graduates of the Air Force Academy take the oath immediately after graduation](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/NYPICHPDPICT000012058856.jpg?w=1024)
“These are all personal memories of him and mine and usually are not intended for public use,” said Dunning.
Biden’s former classmate’s LinkedIn page indicates that he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma in 1961 and later earned an MBA from Washington University in St. Louis.
There isn’t any mention of the Naval Academy on his skilled page, and he isn’t listed in the 1965 digitized alumni list of the Academy.
![President Joe Biden greets an Air Force Academy cadet during his June 1, 2023 graduation at Falcon Stadium at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/1258359853.jpg?w=1024)
The Naval Academy didn’t respond to The Post’s request for comment, but previously claimed it didn’t have the Sixties app.
Biden told the same version of the story at the Naval Academy last May, saying he applied to Annapolis through a letter from then-Delaware Senator J. Caleb Boggs.
But the yr he quoted – 1965 – is the same yr he graduated from the University of Delaware, and the academy doesn’t offer degrees.
“I used to be drafted into the academy in 1965 by the senator I ran against in 1972 – I never planned it that way. I wasn’t sufficiently old to be sworn in. I used to be only 29 after I ran,” Biden said last yr.
![President Joe Biden collapses onstage at the 2023 United States Air Force Academy graduation ceremony at Falcon Stadium.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Biden_Fall_44818-504e3.jpg?w=1024)
“He was a superb man. His name is J. Caleb Boggs. I didn’t come to the academy because I wanted to be a football star. And also you had a man named [Roger] Staubach and [Joe] Bellino here. So I went to Delaware.”
Biden added, “The perfect line of the debate was that after it ended, the announcer… said, ‘Sen. Boggs, is there the rest you need to say? And he said, “Yes, only one.” And he took the microphone. He said, “You realize, Joe, in case you’d accepted my call to the academy,” he said, “you’d still have one yr and three months of lively duty and I would not have any problems now.'”
Biden’s 2008 autobiography Guarantees to Keep makes no mention of the Naval Academy, and the account surprised political journalists who covered his many campaigns.
Curators at the Delaware Historical Association in Wilmington were able to find records of Boggs’s academy appointments from just one yr in the early Sixties.
![President Joe Biden points to sandbags after falling on stage at the 2023 United States Air Force Academy graduation ceremony at Falcon Stadium.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/Biden_Fall_53863-f1dc3.jpg?w=1024)
As vice chairman in 2010, Biden told a rather different version of the story at the Naval Academy.
At the time, Biden said he was “into account” by Boggs – not nominated as he has claimed in more moderen statements. He said it happened in 1960, which can also be problematic because Boggs didn’t grow to be a senator until 1961.
Biden has a habit of engaging together with his audience by sharing dubious personal anecdotes.
In December, Biden told a bunch of veterans that his uncle Frank Biden won the Purple Heart for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II – but there isn’t a evidence of the award and key details make the story not possible.
![President Joe Biden addresses the cadets, their families, and guests during the commencement address on June 1, 2023, at Falcon Stadium.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/1258360005.jpg?w=683)
In October, Biden told a hearth summit that firefighters nearly died putting out a hearth in his kitchen in 2004.
The local fire department said the incident was relatively “insignificant” to trained professionals.
Last January, Biden told students at historically black colleges in Atlanta that he had been arrested during a civil rights protest – for which isn’t proof either.
In 2021, Biden told Jewish leaders that he remembers “hanging out” and “going” to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue after 11 people were murdered there in 2018.
![President Joe Biden addresses the cadets, their families, and guests during the commencement address on June 1, 2023, at Falcon Stadium.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/06/1258360086.jpg?w=1024)
The synagogue said he had never visited, and the White House later said it was considering of calling the synagogue’s rabbi in 2019.
Also in 2021, Biden told listeners in Idaho that his “first job offer” was from an area lumber and wood products company, Boise Cascade.
The corporate said it was new to them, and Biden had not previously described interest in moving to the state.
In 2020, Biden said he “had the great honor of being arrested” in South Africa when he “tried to see [Nelson Mandela] on Robbens [sic] Island”, where Mandela was imprisoned until 1990.
He said Mandela thanked him for it. Biden later admitted that was not true.
Biden is the nation’s oldest president in history, and critics often query his sharpness of mind.
AND Washington Post-ABC poll released this month found that just 32% of the public believed Biden had the mental acuity needed for his position.
But Biden’s allies say he’s just prone to getting words mixed up, and so they see that as part of his political appeal.
Biden dropped out of his first presidential campaign in 1987 due to a speech and law article plagiarism scandal and controversy over claims he made about his academic performance.