But The Post found after conducting “interviews with more than a dozen U.S. troops, their commanders and Biden campaign officials, it appears as though the former vice president has jumbled elements of at least three actual events into one story of bravery, compassion and regret that never happened.”

Though Biden said on Thursday that he was unaware of The Post’s reporting, he was confident that the “essence” of his stories was accurate. But in last week’s retelling in particular, the Post report found, Biden flubbed a number of details, including the location of the encounter, the period of time during which it took place, the act of heroism, the kind of medal awarded, his own role in the ceremony, and the recipient’s military branch and rank.

“I don’t understand what they’re talking about, but the central point is it was absolutely accurate what I said,” Biden told the Charleston-based Post and Courier. “He refused the medal. I put it on him, he said, ‘Don’t do that to me, sir. He died. He died.’”

Biden’s numerous misstatements during this presidential campaign have come under heavy scrutiny as the septuagenarian frontrunner’s mental acuity has been questioned by President Donald Trump and even some Democrats. Trump, of course, has an extensive record of making misstatements and spreading falsehoods himself. And Biden dismissed concerns about his fitness for office as “ridiculous.”

Vermont senator and 2020 presidential contender Bernie Sanders drew an overflow crowd to his downtown Sacramento rally on Thursday evening, part of a multi-day swing through California as he vies for the Democratic nomination to take on President Donald Trump next year.

“I’m here this evening to ask for your help to win the Democratic primary in California,” Sanders boomed to a fired up crowd filling Cesar Chavez Plaza — a diverse mix of young people, parents with children, men and women in business attire, and retirees in wheelchairs.

But Sanders said he was also asking for more from his area supporters.

“It’s not just good enough to defeat Trump, he said. “We have to take on Wall Street. We have to take on the insurance companies. We have to take on the drug companies. We have to take on the fossil fuel industry. We have to take on the prison-industrial complex. We have to take on the military-industrial complex. We have to take on the whole damn one percent!”

Sanders’ rally marked the first time one of the top 2020 presidential candidates has held a public event in Sacramento. California Sen. Kamala Harris spoke to California Labor Federation members in April.

Talk about your inverted yield curve. Or maybe the better borrowed financial-world term is poor return on investment. Either way: Pete Buttigieg continues to rake in the campaign contributions, with his $32 million raised through June trailing only Bernie Sanders ($46.4 million) and Elizabeth Warren ($35.7 million). Yet Buttigieg’s poll numbers badly lag those two rivals, as well as those of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, with the most credible national surveys showing Mayor Pete drawing support in the middle single digits. And a sizable portion of that depressing math can be traced to one, possibly crippling, weakness.

“The energy for Pete is still strong. He’s still raising a bunch of money. He’s still the intellectual liberal’s candidate right now. And he is the candidate of the Democratic donor class,” says Rufus Gifford, who was a top fund-raiser for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns and who has maxed out his donations to five Democratic contenders, including Buttigieg, this time around. “He can speak to the progressive, as well as the business community, in meaningful ways. So I still think he’s right there in contention. Whether or not he can actually put together a coalition to win—I think that’s still a long shot. If you are polling at zero or low single digits in South Carolina with black voters, you just can’t pull it off, unless there’s somehow a 10-way split. And even then, that’s not a strong position to be in.”

When it comes to attracting black voters, who make up 61% of the Democratic electorate in the crucial early primary state, Buttigieg shares a few hurdles with many of his competitors: Unlike Biden, they haven’t been on the political scene for decades, and they weren’t Obama’s vice president for eight years; unlike Harris and Cory Booker, they’re white. Warren, for all her momentum, is also grappling with a large disparity in racial support. But Buttigieg has an extra difficulty: It appears most South Carolina voters don’t know much about him, and what they do know they don’t seem to like. As mayor of South Bend, Buttigieg bungled the removal of the city’s black police chief just before a local protest of Trayvon Martin’s killing in Florida.

“Mayor Buttigieg might be as close as anyone in this field to having the charisma, the magic, that a presidential candidate needs,” says Cornell Belcher, a pollster on both of Obama’s successful White House runs. “But he’s flawed because of the police situation in South Bend. To a lot of African Americans, it’s damn near disqualifying, because it’s a front and center issue that’s on the minds of a lot of African American voters and Hispanic voters. And if you can’t keep that situation under control in that pissant town, why on earth are we gonna put you in the presidency?”

Justice-Based Pollution Reduction Targets and Actions
Asthma-inducing air pollution is a pervasive problem that affects low-income, indigenous, and communities of color first and worst. Tom’s plan to neutralize global warming pollution by 2045 starts by prioritizing the creation of good jobs while ensuring every American can breathe clean air by 2030. We will establish climate-smart transportation, and construct and retrofit buildings to be cleaner and safer.

Community-Led Civilian Climate Corps
The people closest to the problems understand the solutions that will work best in their communities. Tom’s plan will lift up local voices and build a Civilian Climate Corps — a combined service, training, and job creation effort — to implement tailored solutions specific to the needs of individual communities.

A Regenerative Economy
Our government should hold our public lands, waters, and skies in trust for the American people — not as a stockpile of future profits for big polluters. Tom’s plan honors people in legacy energy industries who have devoted their lives to keeping our lights on and our vehicles moving by offering a $50 billion investment program to build up local economies and protect worker’s wage benefits. This plan will invest in local economies, end government giveaways to big polluters, and restore and expand public nature areas, working lands, and parks.

Climate-Smart Infrastructure
Our use of taxpayer dollars must align with our climate targets, protect workers, and help Americans build inclusive and prosperous communities. That’s why we will shift the way we invest in our infrastructure to be smarter about climate change, prioritize clean manufacturing, and require companies to disclose and internalize the costs of their risky fossil fuel holdings.

“I was thanked for my vote by Democratic friends more profusely than I should have been for helping save Obamacare,” McCain wrote. “That had not been my goal.”

Sanders said Thursday that "the idea that a member of the United States Congress cannot visit a nation which, by the way, we support to the tune of billions and billions of dollars is clearly an outrage."

"And if Israel doesn't want members of the United States Congress to visit their country to get a firsthand look at what's going on—and I've been there many, many times—but if he doesn't want members to visit, maybe [Netanyahu] can respectfully decline the billions of dollars that we give to Israel," Sanders added.

Progressives applauded Sanders' remarks, noting that the senator's willingness to challenge U.S. military aid to Israel makes him unique in the 2020 Democratic presidential field.

"People have been asking how Bernie can distinguish himself from rivals who at least profess agreement on domestic issues," tweeted HuffPost reporter Daniel Marans. "This is one area where the distinction is clear."

Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is quietly playing cleanup with dozens of immigration activists and Latino leaders — weeks after upsetting them by using what they considered loaded language to describe his views on immigration policy.

Biden said at the July 31 Democratic debate that undocumented immigrants need to “get in line” and that the country has been right to “cherry-pick” high-skilled immigrants, notably those with advanced degrees.


That language, more commonly used by conservatives, triggered widespread criticism from immigrant rights activists, some of whom said the former vice president was echoing “Republican talking points” on how migrants are admitted to the United States.

The campaign quickly embarked on damage control. Aides assuaged aggrieved activists, and Biden had a closed-door meeting with Latino leaders in San Diego before his speech at the UnidosUS conference last week.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leads the Democratic presidential field in New Hampshire with 21 percent in a Gravis Marketing poll released Tuesday.

Sanders is followed by former Vice President Joe Biden with 15 percent and by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) at 12 percent.

The poll stands in contrast from the most recent polls in New Hampshire compiled by RealClearPolitics, which have showed Biden leading in the critical primary state, followed by Sanders.

Gravis Marketing polled 250 Democratic primary voters on Aug. 2-6 using interactive voice responses and an online panel of cell phone users. The primary question had a margin of error of 6.2 percentage points.

The chairman of the influential House Judiciary Committee authored a message to NORML's email list on Monday—a notable signal of how the cannabis legalization movement has entered the mainstream corridors of power on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who last month filed legislation to remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act and begin repairing the harms of prohibition enforcement, asked the advocacy group's supporters to write their own members of Congress in support of his bill, the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment, and Expungement (MORE) Act.

"America has a moral responsibility to pass my legislation to end the prohibition of marijuana and take on the oppression at the heart of the War on Drugs," Nadler wrote. "I’m proud to work with NORML to create a more just national marijuana policy."


The bill will "once and for all end the destructive policy of federal marijuana prohibition in America" and "remedy the widespread inequities and injustice this policy has brought upon tens of millions of Americans," the chairman told the legalization group's members.

Senator Bernie Sanders carved out a fragment of time Saturday afternoon to call the president "an idiot."

"Donald Trump believes climate change is a hoax," Sanders wrote. "Donald Trump is an idiot."

Sanders is an independent senator from Vermont who is once again running for president as a Democratic candidate in 2020. He lost the 2016 Democratic primary to eventual nominee Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the general election.

President Trump in the past has called climate change a "Chinese hoax." In 2012, Trump tweeted, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.