Did Joe Biden admit to pressuring a Pennsylvania hospital to give his friend’s wife immediate care instead of waiting like others in the emergency room? During a speech Thursday in Chicago, Biden told the audience that he was on the phone the night before to the hospital asking a receiving nurse “what the situation was.” The friend’s wife received attention after that phone call instead of waiting her turn in the crowded emergency room.

Talk about executive privilege. It’s bad enough that Biden was stupid enough to tell the story during an event touting COVID-19 vaccine mandates for businesses. He also went on to spread some questionable statements about the current state of hospitalizations for COVID-19 patients.

“Last night, I was on the telephone with a person at an emergency hospital ward in Pennsylvania because a good friend had called, and he had rushed his significant other to the emergency room because this woman was having trouble breathing, had a high fever, and could not catch her breath,” Biden said during a speech in Illinois promoting COVID-19 vaccine mandates for businesses. “They got her into the hospital. The waiting room was so crowded, things were so backed up they couldn’t even get her to be seen initially. So, because I knew this person, I called. I called the desk receiving nurse and asked what the situation was.”

“To make long story short, it took a while because all of the – not all – the vast majority of the emergency rooms and docs were occupied taking care of COVID patients,” Biden added. “I bet every one of you can name somebody who got sent to the hospital with something other than COVID and couldn’t get it taken care of.”

Biden said he wasn’t complaining and understood that doctors and nurses are working in overcrowded hospitals while “getting the living hell kicked out of them, sometimes physically.” Perhaps he was speaking about reporting in September that shows an increase in violence against health care workers by agitated family and friends of COVID-19 patients. Why did he feel the need to include that kind of language? Everyone knows that health care facilities have been overcrowded since the pandemic began. This president has an odd obsession with physical confrontations.

The trend in COVID-19 cases is downward in many areas of the country. The pandemic shows signs of waning. He used the story to highlight the importance of people receiving the vaccine, I think, but it was just a strange story to tell. It makes him look like he abuses his position to help his friends, which is not really something he should be doing, given his questionable history of family members trading on the family name. He publicly admitted to acting as a fixer for his friend. It’s not a good look and a lifelong politician should have known better. Of course, a hospital staffer was going to jump when the president called to inquire about his friend’s wife’s treatment. That is why the friend reached out in the first place – to help her jump the line ahead of everyone else waiting in the emergency room.

Biden was doing a rewrite on COVID-19 vaccine history as he pushed for employer cooperation on mandating vaccines for employees. He appeared to take credit for starting the vaccination programs, though it was Trump who did that. Operation Warp Speed was hugely successful in getting more than one COVID-19 vaccine to Americans and, if we remember, in September 2020, both Biden and Kamala said they probably would not take a COVID-19 vaccine while Trump was in office. Now Biden wants to claim credit for everything.

In a remark sure to raise eyebrows, Biden said that “when I first started the vaccination program and we got all that vaccine, enough for everyone, we were vaccinating 3 million people a day, we were getting very close before things began to slow down.”

Biden has taken heat — including from fact-checkers — for inflating his own role in the vaccine rollout while downplaying the work of former President Donald Trump.

After taking office, Biden claimed in February, “Just over four weeks ago, America had no real plan to vaccinate most of the country,” despite Trump’s administration publishing a plan in September that his administration largely followed.

Biden visited a construction site in Elk Grove, outside of Chicago to discuss COVID-19 safety after he delivered the first speech Thursday on the importance of vaccine mandates. It was a Clayco Inc. construction site and the visit is now being considered a pay-for-play move by Biden. The company’s CEO is a big-time Democrat donor and donated more than $137,000 to Biden’s 2020 campaign. It sure looks like the location and host of the event was because of Biden’s link to the CEO. The CEO was a Biden bundler.

Clayco CEO Bob Clark is a major Democratic donor who contributed more than $137,000 to Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign, according to records with the Federal Election Commission.

Clark also served as a bundler, bringing in at least $100,000 to Biden’s 2020 campaign, and contributed $1.6 million to Democratic campaigns in total, Forbes reported.

American Accountability Foundation president Tom Jones described Thursday’s visit as “blatant paid-to-play.”

“Whether it is ambassadorships or other senior administration positions, the Biden Administration has continuously rewarded those who financially boosted their campaign,” he told Fox Business. “Continuing the swampy practices of blatant paid-to-play should be of no surprise considering Biden has been a position for the past 40 years.”

Governor J.B. Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, both Democrats, were present at the Clayco visit. Clayco affiliates donated $387,037 to Democratic campaigns in 2020. The White House was not returning requests for information on the visit Thursday.

Biden is the ultimate swamp creature. We should believe him when he tells us who he is. It’s good to be a friend of Joe.

This afternoon, I toured a Clayco construction site in Illinois. The company is doing something more than constructing buildings, they’re helping us beat COVID-19. I hope more companies will follow their lead and implement vaccination requirements. pic.twitter.com/ji7H2nfTNe

— President Biden (@POTUS) October 8, 2021