For the entirety of his decades-long career in political office, Joe Biden has been the king of lying and embellishing stories about his private and public life, perhaps most infamously when he was found in 1987 to have “lifted phrases and mannerisms from a British Labour Party politician while making closing remarks at a debate” during his first run for president.
As the Washington Post also reported soon after the start of his 2019 presidential run, “Examples soon surfaced of Biden using material from other politicians without attribution, and he acknowledged he had been accused of plagiarism in law school.”
“To make matters worse,” the WaPo continued, “a video emerged of Biden exaggerating his academic record while speaking angrily to a voter in New Hampshire.”
Not much has changed since then, except this time around Biden is not merely a Senator; he’s the current Oval Office occupant, and he’s at an age (79) where his defenders routinely boil his embellishments down to him getting older and “Joe just being Joe.”
Considering telling tall tales has been a hallmark of Biden’s time in the public eye, including the truck driver story, the border visit story, and others where he’s said something happened that actually didn’t, the “getting older” excuse rings hollow, especially when one looks at whoppers like the ones he has repeatedly told about the house fire that happened at his Delaware home in 2004 when he was a Senator.
In one version Biden told in 2021, he “had a house burn down with my wife in it,” adding that “she got out safely” before later amending his statement to claim “a significant portion of it burned.”
Except according to published news reports at the time, the fire – which started after a lightning strike and which was called in by Jill Biden – was contained to the kitchen and was “under control” within 20 minutes per the local fire chief:
Firefighters arrived to find heavy smoke coming from the house, but were able to keep the flames from spreading beyond the kitchen, said Cranston Heights Fire Company Chief George Lamborn.
“Luckily, we got it pretty early,” he said. “The fire was under control in 20 minutes.”
And just last week during a visit to Florida in the aftermath of the devastation unleashed by Hurricane Ian, Biden told another version of the story, falsely claiming he “lost an awful lot of” his home to the 2004 fire.
Though again the 2004 fire was confined to the kitchen thanks to the quick work of the firefighters, Biden told the Florida crowd that with that experience in mind that he could relate to their post-Ian struggle to rebuild their lives and homes.
“But we know the feeling, that feeling about: Where am I going to put my head down on a pillow tonight?”
Unfortunately, Biden was at it again with this story during a summit on fire prevention held Tuesday at the White House. In this version, Biden alleges that “we almost lost a couple of firefighters” to the blaze:
My first thought upon reading and hearing what he said was this:
I mean I feel like as long as the story of the house fire has been around (18 years) had firefighters nearly been lost we would have already heard about it numerous times and way before now considering how many talks Biden has given before firefighter unions and the like.
I’m not buying it. Sorry not sorry.