How many jokes can we make about this poor guy before it stops being funny? Well we'll let you know:
Biden on Wednesday repeated for the sixth time this year what he called a "true story" about an encounter with an Amtrak conductor named Angelo Negri — despite the story being declared "false" by fact-checkers.
Biden said it happened when he visited his sick mother, who died in January 2010, less than one year after he became vice president. On at least three other occasions, Biden said it happened much later in his second term.
"I remember one day as vice president, the government keeps fastidious records of how many miles you travel on government planes. And so there's a big headline, ‘Biden travels,' I forget what it was, ‘a million miles on Air Force Two' and so on and so forth," Biden said in Kansas City, Mo.
Biden claimed that Amtrak employee Angelo Negri boasted of the then-vice president's higher mileage count on Amtrak:
"He said, ‘We calculated at the retirement dinner.' He said, '36 years, 119 days a year back and forth, then as vice presidents we figure you've done X number of trips and that adds up to 1,200,000 miles on Amtrak.'"
That story has been debunked by no less of an authority than the Associated Press:
Biden refers to a train ride he made to Delaware when he was vice president and his mother was sick and dying. He explains it happened shortly after he had flown 1.2 million miles, spurring Negri's comment about his mileage on Amtrak in comparison. On previous occasions when Biden has told the story, he's also indicated that it all happened around his "fourth or fifth year" as vice president — or 2012-2013 — although in a rendition of the story told to a crowd in Scranton, Pennsylvania, last week, Biden suggested it was in his seventh year, which would be 2015...
Biden distorts the timeline in a way that makes the story false. He's been telling it, with variations, with more frequency as he pitches his infrastructure plan.
Whew. You know when the Associated Press declares a Democratic politician's story "false," it's gotta be really false.
