President Joe Biden on Friday said the founding principles laid out in the Declaration of Independence sound "corny."
"We're the only country [not] organized based on geography or ethnicity or religion or race or anything else; we're based on an idea," the president said during a visit with service members in Rzeszów, Poland. He then referenced the opening language of the Declaration of Independence. "Literally the only country in the world based on an idea that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all women and men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
"Sounds corny, but it's the truth of who we are," Biden then said. "We've never lived up to it, but we never walked away from it."
Biden attracted controversy in other comments he made during his trip to Poland this weekend, when he appeared to call for regime change in Russia in off-the-cuff remarks.
"For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power," Biden on Saturday said of Russian president Vladimir Putin. The White House later walked back the president's comments.
Biden has put his foot in his mouth before when discussing the Declaration of Independence. At a campaign rally in March 2020, he botched the same line of the declaration that he referenced Friday.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident," Biden said at the time. "All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know the thing."