U.S. President Joe Biden had a recent interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria during which he defended his controversial decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine and suggested that the U.S. can continually support Ukraine the way it supports Israel rather than adding it to the NATO alliance.

About halfway through the interview Biden said something about China that's worth flagging, because the claim he makes is self-evidently false, and it's not the first time he's made it.

Describing the conversations he's been having with China's President Xi Jinping, Biden said the following:

"We're going to put together the Quad which is India, Australia, the United States and Japan. I got a call from him [Xi] on that. He said why are you doing that. I said we're not doing that to surround you, we're doing that to maintain stability in the Indian Ocean and in the South China Sea. Because we believe the rules of the road about what constitutes international air space, international space and the water should be maintained."