President Joe Biden told the same story, which has previously been debunked by fact checkers, twice in one day at a Bidenomics event in Delaware.
Ahead of a Monday speech, Biden told a group of Amtrak workers an anecdote about a company conductor, Angelo Negri, who marveled at the president’s extensive travel on the train all while pinching the president’s cheeks and exclaiming “Joey, baby!” The president then went onto tell the story again during a speech meant to tout his administration’s new $16.4 billion investment for passenger rail projects along the East Coast. The story, however, was previously deemed “false” by CNN in 2021 who decided that Biden’s story just didn’t add up. (RELATED: KJP Says Biden Repeated Story Minutes Apart During Campaign Speech Because He Was Speaking ‘Passionately’)
The president has now told the false story at least 12 times, according to the New York Post.
“When I was vice president, I flew over a million miles on Air Force Two, but I traveled further than that on Amtrak over the years,” Biden said during the speech. “I was coming home to see my mom, and I just — she was living at this time, my dad had passed away. And I got on the train on a Friday, and I won’t get him [the Amtrak conductor] into complete trouble, I’ll just tell you his first name, but I’ll just tell you his first name. He was No. 2 in seniority at the time, Angelo.”
“And Ang came up to me as I was walking in, and he said, ‘Joey!’ and he grabbed my cheek, and he said, ‘Joey, Baby!’” Biden continued.
“They had just published in the newspaper that I had traveled 1,200,000 miles on Air Force planes as vice president, they published that on a regular basis,” the president continued. “He said ‘Big,’ I won’t quote him exactly, but he said, ‘Big deal, Joey!’”
“And I said, ‘What’s it mean, Ang?’ And he said … you know how many miles you traveled on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘A million … [and] 320,000 miles.’ And I said, ‘How do you figure that?’ And he said, ‘Well, 180 days a year, almost 300 miles a day, 36 years,’” Biden said during his speech.
Union members and Amtrak workers listen as U.S. President Joe Biden announces more than $16 billion in new funding for rail projects on the Northeast Corridor while surrounded by trains inside the Amtrak Bear Heavy Maintenance Facility on November 06, 2023 in Bear, Delaware. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
CNN’s fact check states that the president’s story is false because it could not be possible that he had the conversation with Negri. The Amtrak conductor died before Biden could have reached the million-miles-flown mark as vice president, CNN states. CNN also points out that Biden’s mother had died five years before he reached the million-miles-flown mark, making it false that his mother could have been dying in his anecdote.
The repeated story comes as concerns about 80-year-old Biden’s age continue to increase. Seventy-seven percent of Americans, a majority, believe the president cannot govern effectively because he is 80 years old, according to an Associated Press/NORC poll. Of the Americans who believe he cannot govern effectively, 85 percent said they do not want Biden to run for reelection in 2024.