In 1987, along with the plagiarism controversy, Biden’s campaign was buffeted by accusations of hyperbole and imprecision. The idea that Biden is sometimes careless with his words persists. This past December, he called himself a “gaffe machine.”

In 2007, Biden claimed that he was “shot at” in Iraq’s Green Zone; he later clarified that he was “near where a shot landed.” The following year, he told the Associated Press that “literally . . . hundreds of thousands” of people attended the speech that launched his campaign for Senate in 1972.

And in April, during his first campaign rally since declaring his candidacy, Biden falsely said the benefits from the Trump tax cuts went entirely to “folks at the top and corporations.” (Other Democratic candidates have also been dinged for making similar statements.)

“To be clear, a quickly fixed staff error on citations and cherry-picked, isolated examples from a 45-year career in public life are irrelevant to what kind of president Joe Biden would be,” Bedingfield said. “Voters know Joe Biden. They know his values and his character are the polar opposite of Donald Trump, who lies to the American people virtually everyday and whose policies rooted in hatred and discrimination seek to divide us.”