Joe Biden is notorious for making up stories on the fly about his and his family’s history, a troubling penchant that dates back to at least his 1988 presidential campaign.
That campaign, the first of three tries at winning the Democratic nomination, was derailed after it was discovered that he partially plagiarized a speech from then-British Labour party leader Neil Kinnock and switched some things around regarding his and the Biden family’s academic/educational background. It was also revealed that Biden had in part lifted lines from speeches by the late Robert F. Kennedy and President John F. Kennedy without proper attribution.
Some 33 years later, Biden is still at it, with one of the fake stories he mentions often being the one about how he allegedly drove a tractor-trailer in the early 1970s. RedState’s Nick Arama has fact-checked Biden twice on this, first in July when he stated that he “used to drive an 18 wheeler” and again late last month when he made the same claim while on a road trip in Minnesota to tout his bloated infrastructure package.
Though Biden has made the statement numerous times, it appears Politifact only now just got around to fact-checking it. They posted a full write-up on their website, but the broadcast version done by reporter Paul Specht at WRAL-TV out of Raleigh, NC, was one of the more unintentionally hilarious fact checks I’ve seen done on any Biden claim, let alone as it relates to his truck driving claim.
In his report, Specht notes what others including RedState have about how Biden may actually be thinking about a time he either supposedly drove a school bus as a Syracuse University student in the 1960s or the one time it was found that he rode in a tractor-trailer truck in 1973.
But it was the look on Specht’s face and the gestures he made with his hands that made the clip so unintentionally funny. Watch below at around the :49 mark, when he points out that “of course, [driving a school bus is] not the same thing as driving a tractor-trailer” as though the point needed to be emphasized so certain folks (maybe Biden?) would finally get it – LOL:
Though this fact-check was one of the more humorous ones done in recent memory, I’m not quite sure it tops the White House’s attempted “clean-up” of Joe Biden’s remarks during a CNN town hall from October where he said he’s “been to the border” and “knows it well.” In response, “fact-checkers” at the Washington Post did some digging and found out that Biden’s lone “visit” was a drive-by en route to an Obama-Biden campaign event in October 2008. Laughably, they didn’t give the claim a rating, something the White House ran with the next day when asked about it by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy.
Here was that incredible exchange for those who missed it:
Just pathetic. That said, if fake trips to the border and made-up stories about being a truck driver were the only things we had to worry about as far as Joe Biden is concerned…
Flashback: Politifact Suddenly Makes ‘Okay’ Sign Great Again in Comedy Gold of a Biden ‘Fact Check’
