The mainstream media is notorious for its kid-glove treatment of Democrat presidents, a strategy that has been used extensively to protect President Joe Biden and excuse the commander in chief's frequent gaffes, cover for his damaging policies, and dismiss those who are critical of his administration.
On one front, however, The Washington Post is at least acknowledging there's something fishy about Biden's sometimes bizarre and almost always off-tune anecdotes used in speeches — while still giving the president the benefit of the doubt.
Calling them "stories" rather than lies, WaPo fact-checker Glenn Kessler has come out with a full "guide" to the endless string of mumbled tall tales Biden retreats to when he's faced with a crisis or tragedy, yarns that often come across as offensive to those whom Biden is supposed to be comforting.
Fact Checker: Here’s a guide to some of the stories told by President Biden that cannot be verified or are not plausible. https://t.co/d1GNg9WRGg
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 31, 2023
Kessler's guide to Biden's fibs explains how, "throughout his career — most famously in his first presidential campaign, in the 1988 election cycle — Biden’s propensity to exaggerate or embellish tales about his life led to doubts about his truthfulness."
Invoking his recent claim that inflated a small kitchen fire in his home to be a threat to his Corvette, wife, and cat, WaPo's guide admits such episodes are "fanning criticism that he had lied to a vulnerable audience."
Here are, as collected by WaPo, just a few examples of how the "truth" of Biden's story about that supposedly devastating fire has changed:
“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,” Biden said at an infrastructure event in November 2021.
In March this year, speaking to a firefighters conference, Biden said: “Lightning struck in a pond behind my house, went up underneath the conduit, and caught the — caught fire underneath the floorboards of my house. And it was during the summer. Air conditioning was on. Smoke that thick all three stories.” He added: “My fire company was there to go in and save my wife, get her out; the cat; and my ’67 Corvette.”
Speaking to a summit on fire prevention last October, Biden said: “We almost lost a couple firefighters, they tell me, because the kitchen floor was — the — burning between beams in the house, in addition to almost collapsed into the basement.”
Yikes. In reality, news reports from the time the fire happened quote authorities as saying the fire resulted in no injuries and was contained to one room.
When it comes to Biden's story — told at least ten times since taking office — about the Amtrak conductor who told him he'd traveled more than two million miles on the rails between D.C. and Delaware, there are even more blatant factual errors, WaPo explained:
In one version, told at a New Jersey Transit facility in October 2021, Biden recalled: “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.” Biden said that Negri had read Biden had flown 1.2 million miles as vice president, but Negri calculated he actually had traveled more than 2 million miles on Amtrak. “So, Joey, I don’t want to hear this about the Air Force anymore,” Negri allegedly said.
Often Biden adds: “True story.”
But it’s not possible this conversation took place as Biden describes. Negri and Biden were friends, according to a CNN interview with Negri’s stepdaughter in 2021, and she said Negri “adored” Biden. But Biden did not pass the 1.2 million-mile mark until 2016; Negri retired from Amtrak in 1993, 16 years before Biden became vice president. Negri died in 2014, two years before Biden claims they had this conversation.
The Post also pointed out holes and impossibilities in Biden's stories about presenting a war medal to his uncle, being arrested for civil rights activism, being born just after his grandfather died in the same hospital, and seeing two men kissing in Wilmington.
Despite the obvious falsity of Biden's "stories," the White House continues to deny that the president is manufacturing situations in order to pander to Americans, often at times when they're feeling devastated or vulnerable. The White House's Andrew Bates insisted to WaPo that "Biden has brought honesty and integrity back to the Oval Office" and "gives the American people the truth right from the shoulder," claims that are as false as Biden's make-believe stories that are debunked by a simple review of the facts.