CNN fact-checks Biden's 'two lies' during speech on the economy: 'Just cannot help himself'

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Biden's 'two lies' in speech on the economy fact-checked: 'Just cannot stop himself'

CNN fact-checks Biden's 'two lies' during speech on the economy: 'Just cannot help himself'

CNN's Victor Blackwell and fact-checker Daniel Dale fact-checked President Biden's 'two lies' during his speech in Milwaukee on Tuesday. 

CNN fact-checked "at least two lies" President Biden told during his speech in Milwaukee on the economy and said that the president "just cannot stop himself."

"Well, sometimes President Biden just cannot stop himself. During a speech today about the economy he told at least two lies that have already been debunked," CNN's Victor Blackwell said Wednesday, before bringing on fact-checker Daniel Dale. "So we know the president loves the train. He loves Amtrak. He told the same story several times about a conversation that he claims that he had during his vice presidency with an Amtrak conductor named Angelo Negri." 

Biden said Negri told him about how he's ridden over a million miles on Amtrak and finished by saying, "true story, I swear to God." According to Biden, Negri was referencing something he read about the then-vice president flying "over a million miles" on Air Force planes.

Dale said it was "not a true story," and noted that he fact-checked Biden's claim in 2021.

 

"First of all, this conversation about the million miles flying milestone could not have happened because Mr. Negri, who was an Amtrak conductor, was deceased at the time it would have had to occur. He passed that milestone, the vice president, in September 2015. Mr. Negri died more than a year prior, in 2014," Dale said. 

Dale said that the other false element was about how the president said he was going to see his mother, who was sick and in hospice care in his home. 

"In fact, she had died five years prior to him reaching a million miles flown milestone on Air Force 2," Dale said. He noted that while Negri and Biden did have a relationship, the president has told the false story "at least nine times."

"I've counted at least nine times as president that Biden has told the story about his friend that is just inaccurate. So, it's probably time he retires it," Dale continued.

 

President Biden has repeated a false story about his interaction with an Amtrak employee "at least nine times," according to CNN's Daniel Dale. (Stefani Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

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Blackwell also noted that Biden repeated another false story "about his grandfather’s death being just days before his own birth, at the same hospital."

"This is an economy speech by the way," Blackwell noted after CNN showed a clip of Biden speaking. 

"His late grandfather, who’s an oil executive, Joesph H. Biden, died more than a year before he was born and so not a few days or a couple of weeks, as he's previously said. And in a different hospital, his late grandfather died in Baltimore. President Biden was famously born in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I have no idea what the point of this false claim is, sometimes people get false stories from family members, but it’s the second time he’s done it. And he was fact-checked the first time. So, again, it’s time he stops," Dale said. 

 

President Biden arrives to board Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Tuesday. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden was recently fact-checked by The Washington Post over his false claim that his son Hunter never made money from China. 

"Biden’s assertions have been directly rebutted by Hunter himself," Kessler wrote. "In court testimony last week, the younger Biden acknowledged that he in fact had been paid substantial sums in China — the first official confirmation that this was the case."