President Joe Biden has been telling more tall tales - this time about a small kitchen fire which he entirely claimed consumed his De...
President Joe Biden has been telling more tall tales - this time about a small kitchen fire which he entirely claimed consumed his Delaware home, with his wife in it.
Biden addressed a crowd from a New Hampshire bridge on Tuesday speaking about his bipartisan infrastructure plan that was recently signed.
As he spoke about the importance of infrastructure, the president shared an embellished anecdote about the time he suffered a small house fire in 2004. Photos of his Delaware property shortly after the fire, show it to be entirely intact, from the outside.
'Without this bridge, as I said earlier, it's a 10-mile detour just to get to the other side,' he told the crowd. 'And I know, having had a house burn down with my wife in it — she got out safely, God willing — that having a significant portion of it burn, I can tell: 10 minutes makes a hell of a difference.'
According to The Associated Press, the 2004 fire Biden referred to was a 'small fire that was contained to the kitchen.'
President Joe Biden said he 'had a house burn down with my wife in it' in 2004 while speaking about his recently signed infrastructure bill
Biden has shared the story of his house fire several times over the years with varying details
The 'small fire was started by a lightning storm.
'Luckily, we got it pretty early,' Cranston Heights Fire Company Chief George Lamborn said. 'The fire was under control in 20 minutes.'
Biden has shared the story on multiple occasions over the years with previous versions being more accurate than Tuesday's retelling.
During a wildfire event in Sacramento, California this September, Biden told the story sharing how a lightning strike: 'set on fire the internal part of my house, so the air conditioning just was billowing out smoke.'
'When the fire company came, the smoke was so thick — not a joke. And the firefighters — I mean, you could not see in the house, from the basement floor all the way to the third floor. Not a single thing.'
Biden also told the story of his house fire in 2013 speaking at the 25th Annual National Fire and Emergency Services Dinner of the Congressional Fire Services Institute.
Biden's luxurious Delaware home is one of several properties the president owns. The house is pictured in 2016
Biden's Delaware home caught fire in 2004 while Jill Biden was home
He said: 'Lightning struck my home and destroyed a significant portion of it, and you got my wife out. …And in addition to my wife, you got my second-best love out of the house: my ‘67 Corvette. So thank you all.'
The president has a history of exaggerating stories during speaking engagements.
Biden’s habit to embellish his stories first became an issue in 1988 during his first presidential campaign, which he was eventually forced to withdrawal from due to allegations of plagiarism.
While campaigning for president, he claimed to have attended law school on a full scholarship and graduated in the top half of his class. These claims were found to be untrue and Biden eventually retracted them.
The president notoriously touts how he used to ride the train everyday. Last month he retold a previously debunked story about an encounter with an Amtrak conductor for the fifth time.
The president recalled the encounter with Angelo Negri during an appearance touting his ‘Build Back Better’ infrastructure plan in his native hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.
He claimed their chat about him traveling two million miles by rail had happened in the seventh year of his vice presidency - 2015 - even though Negri retired from Amtrak in 1993, and died in 2014.
The president is known to have told the same story on four prior occasions, with the first known instance while campaigning to be president in October 2020.
Biden told the tale again in April 2021 while commemorating the 50th anniversary of Amtrak in Philadelphia.
Biden retold a story of being congratulated by an Amtrak conductor for traveling more than 2 million miles by rail although the employee was dead when the event supposedly took place
Biden has long spoken of his time commuting daily from Washington, DC, to his home in Delaware when he was a US senator (Pictured: then-Senator Biden is seen above on the Amtrak metro liner in September 1988)
Biden claimed that he was congratulated by the Amtrak conductor for his frequency on the train dating back to his time as US senator from Delaware. (Pictured: Then-Senator Joe Biden is seen above (center) in Wilmington, Delaware launching an unsuccessful presidential bid in 1987)
It was rolled out again two months later in June 2021 while hailing his bipartisan infrastructure plans in Wisconsin.
Biden later recounted the story to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in September 2021, three months after liberal-leaning news outlet CNN calling him out for the apparent deception.
In his latest retelling, Biden explained that when he was vice president, government officials kept track of the mileage that he traveled via air.
He then said that ‘seven years into my tenure as vice president,’ he was informed that he had surpassed the 1 million mile mark in flying on Air Force Two - which is the vice president’s official aircraft.
According to Biden, after reaching the milestone, he was accosted by an old friend, Amtrak conductor Negri, who was adamant that his Amtrak milestone was far more impressive.
‘Joey, baby!’ the president recalled Negri telling him.
‘I thought the Secret Service was going to shoot him.’
Biden says he told Secret Service agents: ‘No, no, no, he’s good. He’s good.’
After Biden flew some 1.2million miles, the president claims Negri sarcastically told him: ‘Big deal!’
‘You know how many miles you did Amtrak?’ Negri is said to have told then-Vice President Biden.
‘No, Ang, I don’t have any idea, pal,’ Biden says he responded.
Biden says Negri told him that the president amassed more than 2 million miles on Amtrak going back to his days as a US senator representing Delaware.
The president’s story, however, contains inconsistencies which makes it impossible to have happened at the times indicated.
A key issue with the tale is that Negri retired as an Amtrak conductor in 1993, according to his 2014 obituary. That is long before Biden was elected vice president in 2008. Biden claimed to have hit the milestone in 2015 - a year after Negri's death.
Negri's stepdaughter, Olga Betz, told CNN in June that her stepfather and Biden were indeed friends, though she could not confirm details of the president's story.
She said Negri 'adored' Biden and spoke of how he was 'very thoughtful and personable with the conductors; knew them all by name.'
According to Betz, Negri would go to retirement dinners for other Amtrak conductors, which may have necessitated travel to Washington.
But since he died in 2014, it is impossible for Biden to have spoken to Negri in 'year seven of his vice presidency' - which was 2015.
As well, Biden's mother, Catherine 'Jean' Biden, passed away in 2010 at the age of 92 - more than five years before Joe surpassed the 1 million miles flown milestone.
Further casting doubt on the account, Biden's own office celebrated his one millionth mile on Air Force Two in 2015.
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