Biden's claim he tough-talked Putin about his 'soul' raises media eyebrows, given history of tall tales

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President Biden made some media eyes roll on Tuesday after repeating an oft-told story: that he told Russian leader Vladimir Putin to his face in 2011 that he didn't have a soul.

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos asked Biden about Putin during a wide-ranging interivew, where Biden also said Putin was a "killer" and would "pay a price" for interfering in U.S. elections.

Biden also claimed he had looked Putin in his eyes and said he didn't have a "soul," to which Putin replied, "we understand each other."

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A year later, however, Biden thrashed 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney for calling Russia the top geopolitical foe for the United States. Biden said Romney was in a "Cold War mindset," while then-President Barack Obama told Russia at the time he would have greater "flexibility" to work with the country after his election.

"No chance this is a thing that happened in real life," the Hudson Institute's Rebecca Heinrichs tweeted of Biden's story.

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Some outlets were more credulous, however, with The Daily Beast describing Biden as "pretty extraordinarily frank" about his Russian counterpart.

Biden has been rapped by the media before for telling self-serving anecdotes that are either demonstrably wrong or highly unlikely. This includes bungling numerous details in an apocryphal story of giving a medal to a serviceman for heroism in Afghanistan, a false claim he was once "arrested" while trying to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and a claim he saw two men kissing in Wilmington, Del., in 1959, to which he said his father told him, "Joey, they love each other."

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Biden would go on to oppose gay marriage politically until 2012, but he told the story after the Obama administration flipped its stance and the Supreme Court ruled same-sex marriage was legal in 2015.