President Joe Biden restated a false claim on Thursday that he has journeyed 17,000 miles alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Biden said:

“I was once asked by Xi Jinping in — I traveled 17,000 miles with him in Tibet. I was on the Tibetan Plateau. And he looked at me, and he said to me, ‘Can you define America?’ And I could say the same thing if he asked me to define Greece. I said, ‘Yes, one word,’ — and I mean this sincerely; it’s reg- — it’s recorded. I said, ‘One word: possibilities.’ ‘Possibilities.’”

There is no proof that Biden has ever journeyed 17,000 miles alongside Xi. The Washington Post’s fact checker, Glenn Kessler, awarded Biden with “bottomless Pinocchios” in 2022 for persistently asserting the discredited statement. Kessler initially highlighted in 2021 that Biden has been reiterating this narrative since 2016, without any substantiation. Interestingly, Politico associate editor Catherine Kim mentioned in a recent newsletter that it was former President Donald Trump, not Biden, who has emphasized his connection with Xi.

Kim wrote:

“Even amidst his threats of tariffs, the former president has never held back on his praise for Xi, recently calling him a ‘very good friend of mine during my term.’ Biden does not share the same admiration: He’s publicly called Xi a dictator, a term that has received vigorous pushback from China’s foreign ministry.”

Kim also emphasized a report from The New York Times claiming that China had initiated a social media campaign to support Trump’s victory in 2024.

Trump’s campaign responded with fire:

“In Politico’s Nightly newsletter, Catherine Kim makes a harebrained assertion that China would prefer President Trump to return to the White House. The same President Trump who made China submit to pro-America trade and tariff regulations, called them out for exporting the Coronavirus that killed millions across the world, and stood tough against Chinese economic aggression throughout his first term.”

Cheung also blasted Biden’s China record, saying, “The fact is that China has grown stronger under a weak Biden presidency, and our allies are even more in danger as China builds up its economic and military power. Deadly Chinese fentanyl continues to flow into American communities killing scores of people while illegal Chinese migrants are the fastest growing group crossing the Southern Border.”