Was this before or after his grandfather worked as a coal miner? How about his own arrest in South Africa for trying to sneak into a prison to see Nelson Mandela?
The “he” in these instances is fabulist-in-chief Joe Biden, who believes the best way to forge a bond with a group of constituents he is meeting is by inventing “facts” about his past that are easily refutable. (RELATED: The funniest eight words ever spoken: ‘I give you my word as a Biden’)
It happened again on Wednesday. The setting was a Mack truck plant, where during one of his unscripted moments, Biden blurted out, “I used to drive an 18-wheeler.”
At least that’s what many claim to hear him say when they play the very short clip that follows. (There is a good bit of cross-talk, which makes it hard to pick out exact quotes.)
To my ear, it sounds as though he is saying, “I used to ride an 18-wheeler,” which as W. James Antle III notes at the National Examiner has a small germ of truth. Antle cites a fact-checking tweet by the RNC’s Zach Parkinson, which concedes that Biden did once ride in a truck. It was for “one night in 1973 (he made sure to return home by plane though).” Biden is quoted as having written at the time, “I made the trip because I wanted a firsthand account from the truckers, who say they carry 50 per cent of all the goods shipped within the United States.”
