Fact check: Biden keeps repeating a false story about an Amtrak conductor he knew. That was the CNN headline back in June. Now, for the 5th time, U.S. President Joe Biden once again told his white lie to the American people. This time, here in New Jersey.
“I apologize because some of you have heard this,” Biden said during his Build Back Better tour stop in Kearny, New Jersey.
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“I commuted every single day, 263 miles a day, on Amtrak from the time I got elected United States senator. As matter of fact, when I was Vice President, I used to like to take the train home because my mom was very sick and dying, and I’d come home every weekend to make sure I’d take the train home. And Secret Service — and I’m not criticizing them — legitimately would rather me fly because it’s safer, because too many people can get on and off, et cetera,” Biden told the crowd. “And I’m getting on one Friday, and then one of the senior guys on Amtrak, Angelo Negri — I got to know all the conductors really well; they became my friends. I mean, really, my genuine friends. I have them in my home at Christmas and during the summer. And Ang walks up to me and goes, “Joey, baby!” Grabs my cheek. And I thought the Secret Service was going to blow his head off. (Laughter.)”
“I said, “No, no, he’s a friend.” I said, “What’s up, Ang?” He said, “Joey, I read in the paper — I read in the paper you traveled 1,000 — 1,200,000 miles on Air Force planes” — because they keep meticulous tabs of it. I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Big…” — I won’t say the whole thing — “Big deal.” (Laughter.) He said, “You know how many miles you traveled on Amtrak, Joey?” And I said, “No.” He said, “The boys and I figured it out at the retirement dinner.” He says, “You travel 2 million…” — I think it was 180, but — “2,200,000 miles,” Biden added. “I said, “How did you get that answer?” He said, “Well, 267 miles a day. We figured you traveled 119 days a year for 36 years, and then you traveled was Vice President.” And then he goes, “So, Joey, I don’t hear this about the Air Force anymore.”
“I swear to God. True story,” Biden added.
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Except, according to CNN, no matter how many times Biden tells the tall tale, it doesn’t make it true. CNN had debunked this story by Biden as false.
“Biden was friends with the Amtrak conductor at the center of the story, Angelo Negri. But Negri had been dead for more than a year — and had been retired for more than two decades — before the earliest moment they could conceivably have had the supposed conversation Biden keeps describing,” CNN reported. “Biden’s account simply does not add up. Biden did not reach the million-miles-flown mark as vice president until September 2015, according to his own past comments. But Negri retired from Amtrak in 1993 and died in May 2014, according to an obituary published online and in the Asbury Park Press, a New Jersey newspaper.”
Biden had told several versions of the story this year, each debunked by CNN.
It wasn’t the only lie told by Biden today in New Jersey. Biden once again told his big lie, that the $3.5 trillion spending bill won’t cost Americans anything.
“And, by the way, you hear these numbers — $3.5 trillion or $1.75 trillion. We pay for it all. It doesn’t increase the deficit one single cent,” he said, ending his speech.
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