Biden retells false stories about his dad, birth, wealth, Amtrak and national debt
WASHINGTON — President Biden on Tuesday entertained a Milwaukee audience with debunked anecdotes about the circumstances of his birth, his father’s education, his personal wealth, his interactions with an Amtrak conductor and his impact on the national debt.
Biden told listeners at an electrical manufacturing facility that the ongoing expansion of electric-car charging stations was similar to his grandfather Joseph H. Biden’s work building gas stations.
“My grandpa Biden died very young. He died in the hospital I was born in six days before I was there, before I was born,” the 80-year-old president said.
Biden’s grandfather actually died Sept. 26, 1941, in Baltimore, Md. — more than a year before his birth on Nov. 20, 1942, in Scranton, Pa.
The president invoked his father, Joseph R. Biden Sr, when talking about the “dignity” of work.
“My dad was a high-school-educated guy who was well-read and worked like hell and he didn’t have a chance to go to college,” he said.
The president’s father actually attended the prestigious Johns Hopkins University for one year, the York Daily Record reported in 2020, citing Census records, and a 1941 wedding announcement in the Scranton Tribune said he “attended Johns Hopkins University.”
The White House did not respond to The Post’s request for comment Tuesday.
Biden proceeded to say he was “listed as the poorest man Congress for 36 years — true.”
It’s unclear if Biden, who moved into a 10,000-square-foot former DuPont family mansion in 1974 one year after joining the Senate, ever actually was declared the poorest man in Congress.
“My wife one day says, ‘Did you read the paper today?’ And I was up campaigning for a guy named Pat Leahy of Vermont. And I said, ‘No honey, I didn’t see the Wilmington paper.’ And she said, ‘Headline — above the fold’ — only a politician’s wife would say that — ‘Biden: poorest man in Congress. Is that true?’ Like I was cheating on her or something,” Biden said.
PolitiFact reported in 2019 that the Biden campaign defended a prior version of the story by pointing to the Center for Responsive Politics’s rankings of members of Congress, which go back only to 2004 and show that other lawmakers were estimated to be poorer than Biden.
In 2008, his final year as a senator, Biden was ranked 538 out of 575 federal officials, with an estimated net worth between minus-$360,972 and $409,996. Members of both chambers of Congress ranked lower than him that year.
Biden, who also erroneously said he “watched” a Pittsburgh bridge collapse when in fact he visited hours afterward, proceeded to say that since taking office “I’m the first one to cut the federal debt by $1.7 trillion” — a claim he’s previously made, apparently by confusing the debt and deficit.
In fact, the national debt has increased by nearly $5 trillion since he took office, from $27.75 trillion to about $32.7 trillion.
Biden also sought to underscore his love of passenger rail by telling for at least the 10th time as president a story involving former Amtrak conductor Angelo Negri, who retired from Amtrak in 1992 and died in 2014.
As he has done for prior tellings, the president impersonated Negri’s Italian-American accent and quoted him saying, “Joey, baby!” while complaining about a report that Biden had flown 1 million miles on Air Force jets.
“True story, I swear to God!” Biden said Tuesday while telling the tale, which was rated “False” in 2021 by CNN “Facts First” journalist Daniel Dale, who noted Biden didn’t reach 1 million miles aboard Air Force Two until September 2015, well after Negri’s retirement and death.
In his latest version, Biden acted as if Negri might still be alive, expressing concern that the story would cause him trouble.
“I’m getting on a train to go home and see my mom who was sick in hospice at my home. And this guy, I won’t mention his name because we’re going to get him in trouble,” Biden said.
“But one of the senior guys at Amtrak who I’ve rode with all the time comes over and goes, ‘Joey, baby!’ grabs my cheek — swear to God, I thought they were going to shoot him. And I said, ‘No, no, no, no.’ I said, ‘What’s the matter, Ang?’ He said, ‘We just read this thing about over a million miles on Air Force planes.’ He said, ‘Hell, you know how many miles you travel on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No, Ang, I don’t know.’ He said, ‘We just had dinner up in Newark.’ He said, ‘You traveled on an average 117 days a year round trip. 300 miles a day, 36 years That’s 1,285,000 miles. I don’t wanna hear any more about the Air Force.'”
Biden concluded, “True story, I swear to God.”
Biden is seeking a second term in next year’s election despite polls finding broad public unease about his mental fitness.
A Washington Post-ABC poll released in June found that just 32% of voters believe Biden has the mental sharpness needed to be president — versus 54% who said the same of Donald Trump, 77, the former president and frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
Biden also has a career-long propensity for embellishing personal details.
He dropped out of his first presidential campaign in 1987 over a scandal involving plagiarism of speeches and a law school paper. Biden infamously borrowed British politician Neil Kinnock’s family history — with Biden changing geographic details to claim in speeches that “my ancestors… worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours.”
Unlike Kinnock, Biden’s ancestors did not mine coal.
Biden also falsely claimed during that election that he “graduated with three degrees from college,” was named “the outstanding student in the political science department,” “went to law school on a full academic scholarship — the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship” and ”ended up in the top half” of his class. None of the claims were true.
