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Biden claimed he was at Ground Zero in New York City the day after 9/11. He wasn't. Now people are calling out the lie.
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images

Biden claimed he was at Ground Zero in New York City the day after 9/11. He wasn't. Now people are calling out the lie.

President Joe Biden is being blasted over his latest lie, this time told to service members, first responders, and the families of victims on the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

In his 9/11 memorial speech Monday, Biden claimed that he visited Ground Zero in New York City the day after the attack. The truth of the matter, detailed in his own memoir and documented on film, is that he was hundreds of miles away at the time.

Following a multi-day trip to India, where he attended the G20 summit, Biden stopped Monday in Anchorage, Alaska, where he addressed troops and the families of victims at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.

Biden, who recently confused Ukraine and Iraq and called the Indian prime minister the leader of China, prefaced his remarks by stressing, "Never forget. Never forget. We never forget."

He then tested public memory by claiming to have been at Ground Zero "the next day and looking at the building."

"I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell. It looked so devastating because of the way you could — where — from where you could stand," said Biden.

The octogenarian apparently felt the need for more dramatic embellishment, noting that he not only peered through the "gates of hell" in the aftermath of the attack in NYC but was also witness to the terror attack in Arlington County, Virginia.

"The plume of fire that shot up in the sky and Pentagon. I remember seeing it as I got off the Amtrak train on my way to work in the United States Senate," said Biden.

Biden's 2007 memoir, "Promises to Keep," contradicts his most recent account, detailing how he arrived in Washington, D.C., by train from his Delaware home on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, reported the Telegraph.

Although Biden's memoir might also be susceptible to his trademark aversion to the facts, C-SPAN footage confirms he was in Washington on Sept. 12, among the lawmakers who delivered remarks on the Senate floor.

When pressed on the incongruity between the truth and Biden's claims, the White House conceded to CNN that the president "first visited the World Trade Center nine days after the September 11 terrorist attacks as part of a bipartisan delegation from the Senate."

Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was present at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the attacks, tweeted, "Produce a record or admit you are a liar. And apologize to those who died, or almost died, or lost love [sic] ones, on September 11, 2001. THEN RESIGN."

Although historically deferential to Biden, CNN admitted in its fact-check that it is "possible, of course, that Biden genuinely misremembered when his visit to Ground Zero occurred. As president, though, he has repeatedly made false claims about his past."

A number of Biden's false claims have been too bold to ignore.

Just last month, Biden made at least three false claims about his past during a single speech in Milwaukee.

First, he lied about a conversation he had with an Amtrak conductor named Angelo Negri. That conversation apparently happened a year after Negri had died and over 20 years after his retirement.

Second, Biden claimed his maternal grandfather died six days before he was born, when in fact Ambrose Joseph Finnegan died when the president was 14 years old. The New York Post highlighted a different version of this tall tale told earlier this year in which Finnegan died two weeks prior to Biden's birth.

Third, Biden claimed he saw the January 2022 collapse of a bridge over a ravine in Pittsburgh, when in fact he didn't turn up until several hours later, reported CNN.

On numerous occasions ahead of the 2020 election, Biden lied about getting arrested in South Africa while attempting to visit Nelson Mandela, whom he claimed later hugged him, saying, "'You tried to see me. You got arrested trying to see me,'" reported the BBC.

The New York Post noted that Biden similarly told black students at historically black colleges in Atlanta in 2022 that he had been arrested on numerous occasions while demonstrating in support of civil rights, but the evidence for this too appears to be nonexistent.

In his first State of the Union address, Biden lied about the number of times he visited Iraq and Afghanistan, doubling the actual total and glossing over the fact that he had visited neither as president.

The same year, he claimed he had visited Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 after the anti-Semitic slaying of 11 people, though it turned out he had only called the synagogue's rabbi over the phone.

When campaigning for president in 1988, Biden claimed the speech and history of British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock for himself, using both in an Aug. 23, 1987, debate at the Iowa State Fair and on multiple other occasions, reported the New York Times.

Biden's 1987 claims that he "went to law school on a full academic scholarship," "ended up in the top half" of his class," won a prize in an international moot court competition, "graduated with three degrees from college," and was "the outstanding student in the political science department" were all false.

In addition to lying about his performance in college, where he did relatively poorly, Biden lied about the authorship of work he submitted, having plagiarized a law review article in law school.

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Joseph MacKinnon

Joseph MacKinnon

Joseph MacKinnon is a staff writer for Blaze News.
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