Fact check: Biden falsely claims he was at Ground Zero 'the next day' after 9/11
He did it three times in a single speech last month – falsely claiming to have witnessed a bridge collapse in Pittsburgh in 2022 (he actually visited the site more than six hours after the collapse), falsely claiming his grandfather had died just days prior to his own birth at the same hospital (his paternal grandfather died more than a year prior in another state), and again repeating a long-debunked false story about a supposed conversation with an Amtrak conductor who was deceased at the time the story would have had to take place.
In 2021 and 2022, he falsely claimed to have been arrested during a civil rights protest (he had previously said merely that an officer had taken him home from a protest), falsely claimed he “used to drive an 18-wheeler” (the White House said he once had a job driving a different vehicle, a school bus), falsely claimed to have visited the Pittsburgh synagogue where worshippers were killed in a 2018 mass shooting (he had spoken to its rabbi by phone but had not gone), falsely claimed to have visited Iraq and Afghanistan as president (he made repeated visits as a senator and vice president but not as president), told a false story involving a late relative and the Purple Heart, and falsely described his interactions decades ago with late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.
Dude gets back from a whirlwind Asian trip, with a 12 hour flight home, and accidentally said a day later instead of a week later.
Talk about a slow news day.
Hmm. Most of these seem like fairly minor inaccuracies. Some are more inaccurate, but all seem to have some bearing on real events he was involved in. I'm not really seeing an intentional weaving of untruth like I see in many other politicians at this time. I more see the unscripted memory recall of an older person.
i see it as more of an example of why we shouldnt want septuagenarian or octogenarian politicians of either party.
Be probably just meant to say “week” instead of “day.” Such a minor screw up. I do shit like that all the time, and I’m half his age.
It's called confabulation, and it's not "normal" aging, it's a sign of memory loss. Dementia is a common cause.
I find it staggering that the democratic party are going with him as their presidential candidate. Feels like a mix of the sunken cost fallacy and a fear of turning away from someone who is currently beating Trump in the polls.
Arguably Trump confabulates too but it gets dismissed as he's been a liar for so long no one notices.
2024 is looking like an election with two elderly men with dementia vying for the whitehouse, and another one as senate leader. That's how extreme US politics has become - you could put up a literal monkey now and as long as he's in the right party he would get nearly 1/2 the vote.
It's all a sign of how dangerously broken the US electoral system is.
I hate it. I'll still vote for the puppet with dimentia that's commanded by Democrats over the one commanded by Republicans if that ends up being my only choice to fend off fascists.
They're not even puppeting him very well if they're letting him make all these inaccurate statements in speeches.
I'm not sure you can puppeteer away being a bad public speaker with dimentia. You can puppeteer policy though, which is what actually matters.
If the speech was written down and he read it as it was written then that's on his staff as much as him. But yeah bad situation all the way around.
The Amtrak conductor one is pretty bad.
https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-biden-amtrak-e79af0cd7015ea3d559609817cceb144
AP FACT CHECK: Biden tale of Amtrak conductor doesn’t add up
From the article:
“I apologize because some have heard this,” Biden told a crowd Monday in New Jersey, starting up a story he has repeated in various forms at least five times, dating back to the 2020 campaign.
“I swear to God. True story,” he said Monday, for emphasis.
THE FACTS: The tale as Biden spins it is wrong. Negri could not have had that conversation because he was already deceased by the time Biden logged 1.2 million miles on Air Force Two.
It’s plausible that Biden logged 1.2 million train miles as vice president by early 2016, based on accounts around the time by Biden and David Lienemann, the vice president’s official photographer. But Negri had long retired as an Amtrak conductor, in 1993, and died in May 2014.
That honestly just seems like he got the guy’s name wrong. Like Angelo Negri and Arturo Nuncio were friends and he mixed them up. If he made the story up whole cloth, it’s definitely unnerving
5 times?
I'm sound of mind and I'm on the 1000th time of swapping Tuesday and Thursday in sentencess. Every time. Brains are weird.
9 times out of 10 if I try to name one of either Daniel Radcliffe or Elijah Wood, I'll name the wrong one by accident.
Well yeah, if you’re certain that the name you have is right, you’ll repeat it. He’s old and has been famously misspeaking his whole career.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/30/politics/fact-check-biden-amtrak-angelo-negri-miles-traveled/index.html
I noticed that reference in the other piece, but I don’t see why they think that from the quote they used. I used to commute a lot when my mom was dying =/= I only commuted when my mom was dying.
I just don’t see this as more likely to be made up than to have a misremembered detail. Do you think Biden invented it fully?
I don't know man, it's as bizarre as my dog staring at me when dropping a deuce. Why do it 5 times, and then boldly (after having it debunked after the third) "swear to God true story" on top?
This is what happens when politicians are allowed stay in office through old age. He probably thinks it’s true and it probably is 95% true, but the details got fuzzy
Context is everything man...even if EVERYTHING you point out was a deliberate lie, entirely made up, for personal and political gain, it still pales in comparison to the dangerous lies being told daily by EITHER of the other 2 guys he's likely to run against.
I'd almost rather they were all lies in this instance because keeping lies straight is a lot more cognitive burden than misremembering is...at least that would be evidence the lights were still on
I shared a small office every day for 2 years with a guy whose name I can't remember. I went to his wedding and traveled to New Mexico to meet up with him and his family once. I still can't remember his name half the time.
I mix up my girlfriend's friends' names ALL the time, and I've hung out with them on a regular basis for the last 5 years.
I'm only in my 40s, while Biden is in his 80s. I give leeway to the memories of people that old. Whether we should be electing people that old is a different argument (he's the same age as Trump), though.
Considering the absolute bullshit his most likely opponent says on an hourly basis, this seems minor.
All of Biden's "lies" are the equivalent of when my mom describes an event that happened "a week or two ago" that was actually 3 months ago. They're minor unimportant details, or just simplification for the sake of giving speeches.
ROFL…. Let’s compare presidential lies, shall we?
We talking "evil doers and WMDs" or "stable geniuses"?
How about all the way back to "I am not a crook"
All of these sound so minor.
The question is whether it's a memory thing, or if this is the standard politician thing where they're focused more on the impact of the story.
I think it's just a "I said the wrong word" thing.
Now if he starts recanting about the time he met Elvis on the moon, then I'll be concerned.
How about a dead Amtrak conductor?
https://apnews.com/article/ap-fact-check-biden-amtrak-e79af0cd7015ea3d559609817cceb144
AP FACT CHECK: Biden tale of Amtrak conductor doesn’t add up
From the article:
“I apologize because some have heard this,” Biden told a crowd Monday in New Jersey, starting up a story he has repeated in various forms at least five times, dating back to the 2020 campaign.
“I swear to God. True story,” he said Monday, for emphasis.
THE FACTS: The tale as Biden spins it is wrong. Negri could not have had that conversation because he was already deceased by the time Biden logged 1.2 million miles on Air Force Two.
It’s plausible that Biden logged 1.2 million train miles as vice president by early 2016, based on accounts around the time by Biden and David Lienemann, the vice president’s official photographer. But Negri had long retired as an Amtrak conductor, in 1993, and died in May 2014.
I'm going to punch some holes in that... the fact check is making the assumption that Negri was still working as a conductor. That's not what Biden said. He said he was a "senior guy at [possibly should've been or in the way some folks speak, on] Amtrack."
Not concerned about whether he recalls it as 2012-2013 or "in this one case" 2015.
Not concerned that his mother would've already been dead, the story about how he was riding to see her under my interpretation is not related to the event with Ang.
I'm generally all for AP but this is a mess. It also ignores the calculation being slightly wrong/made with different assumptions by the train drivers/Joe misremembering or misstating the exact calculation.
This is an exceptionally weak fact check that seems to interpret what Biden was saying in a very specific way and then asserts there's no way that specific interpretation happened... rather than questioning the interpretation and elements of the situation.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/04/30/remarks-by-president-biden-at-an-event-marking-amtraks-50th-anniversary/
This would've been after already getting beaten up over inaccuracies.
Jesus fucking Christ, this is the hill you are dying on? This is such a nothing burger of a confabulated story. He's telling a story for the moral of it, not for the exact accuracy of a court testimony. He took the train a lot. He knew one specific conductor. Whether he knew the conductor while he was taking the train to see his mom is immaterial to the point of the story.
This is beige suit level of idiocy.
Point is he can't get basic retelling of a situation correct, even with a staff and after his versions getting debunked he "swear to God, true story" his claims. You clearly don't care, which is fine, you're free to move along..
I think he probably just didn't care. As the other guy said, the exact details of the story weren't his priority. I'm 28, even I as a younger man have variations in my stories when I tell them, especially off the cuff...
and Biden has a reputation for going off script. See the old "scandal" where he as VP tells Obama "this is a big fucking deal" as the mic accidentally catches him.
This seems like one of those "off script" moments. I mean do you really think he couldn't get this story down with precision if he cared? And if he or his writers are so worried about it, do you really think they'd leave it in the script over and over again?
He's old, I'll give you that, but come on. The machine that wants to paint this guy as incompetent is relentless.
He's fine, a half hour with no script in hand, no prompter, etc last Monday https://youtu.be/ybC9TfYRxP8
CNN is angling so hard for any Republican but Trump. It’s gotten so obvious in their coverage.
Or his speech writers played some stuff up and he embellished a bit as entertainers are prone to do.
These are such weak facts to check. I can sense the saliva seething through OPs teeth as they wrote this.
Im laughing at the people blaming his Asia trip like this isn't exactly the kind of flubs Biden makes usually. This is just him guys, he's fucking old and he's gonna keep being old.
To be fair, he’s been flubbing for decades.
Ok
Why should I care
Kellyanne Conway would've been there too, but she was busy helping relief efforts of the Bowling Green Massacre
Grandpa forgets details sometimes. Not his fault.
Dude just zipped around Asia in a couple days then took a 12 hour flight home. Is it really that weird that he accidentally said the next day instead of the next week?
I’m half his age, and travel like that makes me completely incoherent.
It's not like he was flying in cheap economy seats. Grandpa got plenty of nap time on his flight.
Dude is the 2 decade reigning flub champ. Swapping day and week isn’t even a C tier flub.
Also, a nice seat still doesn’t make up for the fact that the time zone is basically entirely inverted. Dude just got off several days working the night shift.
This doesn't fix jet lag which is fucking brutal.
So you never had a jetlag, got it.
I've worked flexible work shifts, which is basically the same thing. One day work starts at 3:30pm and goes till 12am, another it starts at 12am and goes till 7am, it's bullshit.
If you get enough sleep it's fine. Old people struggle a lot with disrupted sleep schedules, though, so there's no way I could do that shit if I was eighty god damn years old. Why do y'all pretend he isn't ancient?
Not just grandpa. How much of what we remember of 9/11 is accurate? How can we be sure? Is anyone fact checking our memories?
I have no idea at this point what I saw on 9/11 and what I saw repeated days later.
My good friend and I both very clearly remember watching the Challenge explosion happen live on TV in 6th grade science class.... it happened when we were in 4th grade at different schools.
It was 1986, so I was 9. That might have been 4th grade for me too.
I was in graphics class, junior year. We were working on our projects in the lab; the teacher quietly went over and turned a tv on it took a good 2/3’s of the class for the shock to set in, and the. Everything seemed kinda pointless the rest of the day.