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‘This Is A Leadership Issue’: CNN’s John King Rebukes Biden For Apparent Plagiarism

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Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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CNN’s John King took aim Wednesday at former Vice President Joe Biden, arguing that a plagiarism scandal showed a failure of leadership.

WATCH:

Reports began circulating earlier in the week that parts of Biden’s newly-released plan to address climate change might have been plagiarized.

As The Daily Caller News Foundation reported Tuesday:

Josh Nelson, co-director of environmentalist group CREDO Action, highlighted two instances where Biden’s campaign used the exact same language as left-wing nonprofits, without citations.

A subsequent review of Biden’s plan by The Daily Caller News Foundation identified three other examples of similarly phrased excerpts.

Political reporter Arlette Saenz characterized the issue as a “glitch in the rollout” of Biden’s long-awaited plan, coming on the heels of criticism within his own party. Freshman Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had accused him indirectly of taking a middle-of-the-road approach to climate change, something Biden denied.

“This was supposed to be a campaign ‘A-Team,'” King remarked. “This was not an ‘A’ performance.”

“When this has been an issue in the past,” King continued, “How? How? This is a staff issue, the former vice president probably had nothing to do with this, but he’s the leader of the organization. Hello?”

Washington Post reporter Karoun Demirjian pointed out the fact that Biden’s team now has access to software that could have checked things for him and avoided any potential embarrassment.

“This is a style issue. This is a leadership issue,” King concluded. “He wants to be president of the United States. You can’t do this stuff. You just can’t. You do it in our business, you get fired.”

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