Joe Biden’s presidential campaign is a train wreck of gaffes and mental lapses. His tendency to fuck up during every public appearance has garnered significant attention from the media, sometimes played for laughs and sometimes reported with genuine concern. He seems to be legitimately unwell, and his declining polling numbers show that people are noticing.

But the sheer frequency of his mental errors has masked a far more sinister and intentional habit, one that’s been core to his entire political career: Joe Biden can’t stop lying.

Tuesday morning, soon after being caught inventing a story about a soldier in Afghanistan, Biden lied to an NPR reporter about his support for the Iraq War. In Biden’s version of events, he began to oppose the war as soon as George W. Bush’s brutal “shock and awe” campaign began: “Immediately, that moment it started, I came out against the war at that moment.”