WASHINGTON – President Joe BidenAccording to the stories, he was a teenage civil rights activist, a former truck driver, the first in his family to go to college and the cousin of a cannibalism victim.
All of these statements stretch the truth or are outright untrue. But Biden continues to tell personal stories with rhetorical touches and factual freedom when he works a room or entertains an audience. They’re a way to connect with voters, emphasize his “middle-class Joe” persona and charm his audience.
Despite Biden’s tendency to exaggerate details when recounting episodes from his life, these autobiographical embellishments differ in scope and significance from the stream of lies about a stolen election spread by his opponent, former President Donald Trump.
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A White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, said Biden had “brought honesty and integrity back to the White House” and shared life experiences that had shaped his views.
Here are some of the president’s most repeated statements.
Connecting with his audience through hyperbole
What was said:
“At our last debate, when I was 29 years old, the first question he was asked during the debate was, ‘Do you have any regrets, Senator Boggs?’ And he said, ‘No.’ Then we got to the end of the debate, where I took the floor and then he would close. He stood up and said, “You know, I was asked if I had any regrets. I said no, but I do have one: If Joe Biden had gone to the Naval Academy when I appointed him, he would still have seven months left and he wouldn’t be able to run. ”
— in a commencement address in May at West Point Military Academy
Biden has told this story repeatedly to graduating cadets from various military academies and to military families: In high school in the 1960s, he had been nominated to the U.S. Naval Academy by Sen. J. Caleb Boggs, R-Del. his opponent in his first Senate race. Biden sometimes adds that Boggs complained in a debate later in 1972 that Biden had refused to accept the nomination. It’s an anecdote that dates back to 2010, when Biden said in a speech that Boggs was “considering” him for the academy.
It is possible that this nomination occurred, but The New York Times could not verify Biden’s claim.
The academy does not have records showing that Biden has received a nomination or appointment, said a spokesperson, Ashley Hockycko, but does not have preliminary applications or requests to congressional offices.
Boggs began his first term as senator in January 1961. If the current deadline is any indication, members of Congress have until January 31 to submit nominations to the Naval Academy. Biden graduated from high school in June and began his first semester at the University of Delaware that fall. The Delaware Historical Society, which holds Boggs’ Senate archives, could only find his 1962 Naval Academy nominations. Biden’s name was not on that list.
Likewise, the Times could not verify Biden’s retelling of that 1972 debate. Newspaper articles about debates and events Biden and Boggs attended in September and October of that year did not mention questions about regrets or the nomination. In his 2007 autobiography, “Promises to Keep,” Biden wrote about just one debate, without any reference to the nomination.
It is also unclear what Biden believes Boggs might have meant by suggesting Biden would be attached to the academy or the armed forces for another seven months. Cadets at the Naval Academy undergo four years of training and serve in the Navy or Marine Corps for a minimum of five years after graduation. If Biden had attended the academy instead of the University of Delaware in 1961, he still could have run against Boggs in 1972.
What was said:
“I used to drive an 18-wheeler.”
– at an April campaign event in Florida
Biden often repeats this claim when he attends events with union members. The White House cited Biden’s job driving a school bus while in law school. In the 1970s, as a senator, he also made an 800-kilometer trip in a truck.
What was said:
“In fact, the NAACP was the first organization I ever joined. I wasn’t allowed to vote until you were 21, but I got involved in civil rights when I was 15.”
– at an NAACP event in Michigan in May
“She said, ‘Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood? It was 70 houses, built in a suburb. And I told you that a black family moved in and people were protesting down there. I told you not to go there. And you went down, remember? And you were arrested while standing on the porch with a black family. ”
– in an interview with Howard Stern in April
For decades, Biden has occasionally suggested that he played a bigger role in the civil rights movement than he actually did. While there has been confirmation of Biden’s participation in some desegregation events, he has also said he would not consider himself an activist in the movement. There is no evidence that he was ever arrested.
The White House said there are countless moments in a person’s life that local newspapers would rather not publish, and that Biden was proud to have opposed segregation in his youth.
The Washington Post described several other examples of the anecdote Biden tells, through his mother, about his arrest as a teenager while protesting for civil rights. In some cases, Biden has said he was 13 or that police were taking him home.
Local newspapers reported that in the spring of 1959, when Biden was 16, a black family moved into an all-white neighborhood in Wilmington, Delaware, prompting residents to protest. in return for integration. Police officers described the protesters as a gang, some armed with firebombs, and arrested seven people, including four teenagers, for possessing fireworks. (The house was bombed and destroyed later that year.)
Biden joined the NAACP during his first political race for the New Castle County Council in 1970, when he was in his late 20s, according to a 2019 Post article that included an interview with the former president of the Delaware NAACP.
Emphasizing and exaggerating his middle-class roots
What was said:
“I’m the first in my family to ever go to college.”
— at a May campaign event in Detroit
Biden described his maternal grandfather, Ambrose Finnegan Sr., in his 2007 autobiography as the “only person in the house with a college degree.” According to Finnegan’s 1957 obituary, he attended and played football for Santa Clara College in California. Biden has previously said he was the first on the Biden side of the family to go to college.
What was said:
“Under my plan, no one making less than $400,000 will pay an extra cent. I hope you can all make $400,000. I never did that.”
— at an April campaign event in Pennsylvania
“She said, ‘Have you read today’s paper?’ I said, ‘They don’t have today’s paper – Wilmington paper, Delaware – where I am [Sen. Patrick] Leahy in Vermont. And she said, ‘Well, let me read it. Top of the fold, headline: Biden, poorest man in Congress. ”
– at a March campaign event in Nevada
For much of his political career, Biden was among the least wealthy members of Congress. With a net worth of negative $166,500, Biden was listed as its poorest member by the Roll Call newspaper in 1990, the first year it began compiling net worth rankings. (The News Journal, based in Wilmington, reported the rankings on page 33, not the front page.)
Throughout his decades-long career in the Senate, he remained near the bottom in terms of net worth. According to Biden’s tax returns, he and his wife Jill earned less than $400,000 almost every year from 1998 to 2016. But they made more than $400,000 in 2013 and every year since 2017, ranging from $408,733 in 2013 to more than $11 million. in 2017. (The president’s annual salary is $400,000 by federal law.)
Stories that are too good to be true
What was said:
“Ambrose Finnegan – we called him Uncle Bosie – he got shot. He was Army Air Corps before there was an Air Force. He flew single-engine aircraft and reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. He volunteered because someone couldn’t make it. He was shot in an area where there were many cannibals in New Guinea at the time.”
– in remarks to reporters in April
In his 2007 autobiography, Biden wrote that he often heard family stories about his hero uncle, Ambrose Finnegan Jr., who was a pilot during World War II. But his suggestion that Finnegan was shot and cannibalized in New Guinea is not supported by military records or anthropologists.
According to the Pentagon agency responsible for those missing or captured during the war, Finnegan, a second lieutenant, was a passenger on a plane that crashed into the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea in May 1944 after the engines failed. . Three men, including Biden’s uncle, were lost in the crash, while a fourth was rescued by a passing ship. There is no evidence that the plane was shot down or that Finnegan was piloting the plane.
Finnegan would have been an unlikely victim of cannibalism in New Guinea, anthropologists and locals told PolitiFact and The Guardian. Research into cannibalism in the country has shown that victims were often enemies of warring tribes as an act of revenge, or deceased relatives as part of a mourning ritual.
Biden shared his account of Finnegan’s death after visiting a war memorial in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that bore his uncle’s name. The story was intended to highlight Biden’s commitment to equipping troops and honoring veterans, the White House said.
What was said:
“I got on the train and one of the senior guys from Amtrak – I’ve become friends with all of them after all these years, and I rode as a senator for 36 years – and he comes up to me – his name is Angelo – and he comes along and says, “Joey, honey!” He grabs my cheek and I thought they were going to shoot him. And I said, ‘Ang, what’s going on?’ He said, “I just read in the paper” – because they keep a close record of how often you – how many miles you fly an airplane for the United States Air Force as vice president. ‘I just read in the on paper, Joey, you’ve traveled 1,200,000 miles on Air Force Two. ”
– in a speech in Nevada in December
This story, as told, stretches credulity. According to him, Biden flew 1.2 million miles on Air Force Two in early 2016. Angelo Negri, the conductor, retired from Amtrak in 1993 and died in 2014. It’s possible Biden mistook another conductor for Negri: He said he spoke to an unnamed Amtrak employee in 2009, who also told him shouted, “Joey, honey. ”
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