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Fact check: Biden tells three false personal anecdotes in economic speech

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On 18 Dec 2023, Rudy Canoza forging David Hartung
<junk@LCMS_shitbags.org> posted some 
news:bP2gN.64327$c3Ea.30816@fx10.iad: 

> Biden lies and every progressive in America swears to it.

Washington
CNN
 — 
President Joe Biden made three false claims about his own past in a 
Tuesday speech in Milwaukee.

The speech was focused on the economy and the Inflation Reduction Act the 
president signed into law one year ago Wednesday, and his economic claims 
in the prepared address were almost entirely accurate. But he also 
peppered in three false personal anecdotes, including two that have 
previously been debunked, continuing his habit of inaccurate ad-libbing 
about his biography.

In addition, Biden repeated one false and previously debunked political 
boast. As he did earlier this year and during the 2022 midterm elections, 
he wrongly asserted that he has significantly reduced the national debt, 
which has actually increased significantly during his presidency. He was 
once again mixing up the debt with the deficit; the White House made a 
correction in the official transcript, as it previously did with a 
transcript in February when Biden did the same thing.

Here is a fact check on his Tuesday remarks.

Another rendition of the Amtrak story
Biden has long been known as a devotee of Amtrak, the train service he 
used during his 36 years as a US senator to commute between Washington and 
his home in Delaware. At least nine times as president, he has told a 
vivid personal story about a conversation he claims to have had during his 
vice presidency with an Amtrak conductor named Angelo Negri.

Except, as CNN pointed out in 2021, that conversation could not possibly 
have happened – because Negri was deceased at the time the conversation 
would have had to have taken place.

In the version of the story Biden told on Tuesday, he said that in the 
sixth or seventh year of his vice presidency, a newspaper headline 
announced that he had traveled almost 1.2 million miles on Air Force 
planes. He said that when he then was “getting on a train to go home and 
see my mom, who was sick and in hospice in my home,” a man he identified 
as “Ang,” his nickname for Negri, “comes up and goes, ‘Joey, baby,’ and 
grabs my cheek.” Biden said he thought the Secret Service was going to 
shoot Negri.

Biden then said: “And I said, ‘No, no, no, no.’ I said, ‘What’s the 
matter, Ang?’ He said, ‘We just – I read this thing about…over a million 
miles on Air Force planes.’ He said, ‘Hell, you know how many miles you 
traveled on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No, Ang. I don’t know.’ He said, ‘We just 
had a retirement dinner up in Newark.’ He said, ‘You traveled a hundred – 
an average 117 days a year, round trip, 300 miles a day, 36 years. That’s 
1,285,000 miles. I don’t want to hear any more about the Air Force!’”

The crowd reacted with laughter and applause, and Biden said, “True story, 
I swear to God.” But it isn’t a true story.

Facts First: Biden’s story is false in two ways. First, as CNN and others 
have pointed out before, he could not possibly have had this exchange with 
Negri: Biden did not reach the million-miles-flown mark as vice president 
until September 2015, according to his own past comments, but Negri had 
died more than a year earlier, in May 2014. Second, as CNN has also noted 
before, Biden’s mother was not sick at his home at the time he hit the 
million-miles-flown milestone. In fact, she had died more than five years 
prior.

Negri’s stepdaughter, Olga Betz, told CNN in 2021 that Negri and Biden 
were indeed friends. She said Negri “adored” Biden and spoke of how Biden 
was “very thoughtful and personable with the conductors; knew them all by 
name.” She also provided a photo of Biden hosting a retirement party for 
Negri in his Senate office in 1993.

Nonetheless, Biden has been telling a false story about his late friend 
for more than two years. We wrote in 2021 that Biden might have been 
misremembering the details of some real conversation he had with Negri 
prior to Negri’s death in 2014 or mixed up Negri with another Amtrak 
employee he spoke to in 2015 or 2016. After numerous media fact checks, 
however, he has now had ample time to correct himself.

The White House did not immediately respond Wednesday to a request for 
comment for this article. When Karine Jean-Pierre, now the White House 
press secretary, was asked in 2021 about reports that Biden’s story about 
Negri was inaccurate, she said, “I haven’t seen that. But the President’s 
long history with Amtrak and appreciation for the hardworking employees is 
very well known.”

Biden’s birth and his grandfather’s death
Biden also repeated a version of a family anecdote he told in April. He 
said Tuesday that his grandfather, who had worked as an oil company 
executive, died just days before he was born himself in the same hospital.

“And, by the way, my Grandpop Biden, who died very young – he was – died 
in the hospital I was born in six days before I was there, I mean before I 
was born,” Biden said.

Facts First: Biden’s claim is false in two ways, as conservative media 
outlets pointed out in April when Biden said his grandfather “died in the 
same hospital I was born in two weeks before I was born.” His paternal 
grandfather who had worked in the oil industry, Joseph Harry Biden, died 
in a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, in September 1941; the president was 
born more than a year later, in November 1942 – and at a different 
hospital, in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Biden’s maternal grandfather, Ambrose Joseph Finnegan, did die at the 
Scranton hospital where the president was born, but in 1957, when the 
president was 14 years old.

Biden and a Pittsburgh bridge collapse
Touting his administration’s investments in infrastructure projects around 
the country, Biden invoked a 2022 bridge collapse in Pittsburgh – and 
claimed that he personally saw the bridge fall.

“A lot of you were with me when I was in Pittsburgh. And, by the way, the 
– Pittsburgh is the ‘City of Bridges.’ More bridges in Pittsburgh than any 
other city in America. I watched that bridge collapse. I got there and saw 
it collapse. With over 200 feet off the ground, going over a valley, and 
it collapsed,” Biden said.

Facts First: It’s not true that Biden “got there and saw it collapse.” The 
collapse occurred before 7 a.m. on January 28, 2022, more than six hours 
prior to Biden landing in the Pittsburgh area for a scheduled visit that 
included a speech about the economy and infrastructure. He visited the 
site of the collapse after 1 p.m. that day.

So Biden could have accurately said that he witnessed the damage from the 
collapse. But his statement that “I got there and saw it collapse” is not 
true.

Biden and the national debt
Biden claimed, “And unlike the last president, in my first two years in 
office, even with all we’ve done – I’m the first one to cut the federal 
debt by $1 trillion $700 billion.”

Facts First: This is false, as the White House implicitly acknowledged in 
the official transcript by striking through the word “debt” and replacing 
it with “deficit.” As CNN noted in February, when Biden made a near-
identical claim, Biden has not reduced the national debt (the accumulation 
of federal borrowing plus interest owed); in fact, the national debt has 
increased from about $27.8 trillion on Biden’s first day in office in 2021 
to about $32.7 trillion today, though it’s important to note that debt 
increases are not solely the fault of any current president. It is the 
federal deficit – the one-year difference between spending and revenues – 
that declined by roughly $1.7 trillion between fiscal 2020 and fiscal 
2022, from about $3.1 trillion to about $1.4 trillion.

And the debt-versus-deficit mix-up is not the only issue with Biden’s 
claim.

As CNN has repeatedly noted, it is highly questionable how much credit 
Biden deserves for the $1.7 trillion decline in the deficit, since the 
decline happened overwhelmingly because emergency pandemic spending from 
the end of President Donald Trump’s administration expired as planned. In 
fact, independent analysts say Biden’s own new laws and executive actions 
have significantly added to current and projected future deficits, not 
reduced those deficits.

You can read more here and here.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16/politics/fact-check-biden-amtrak-
grandfather-pittsburgh-bridge-debt/index.html

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Fact check: Biden tells three false personal anecdotes in economic  speech Trump <trump_owned@nytimes.com> - 2023-12-19 00:52 +0100

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