President Joe Biden Repeats Claim That He Was Once A Truck Driver, Despite Being Called Out For Fib
At a campaign event this week, the president repeated debunked claims that he was once a truck driver.
April 25 2024, Published 3:30 p.m. ET
President Joe Biden doubled down on an exaggerated version of his past during a speech in Florida this week, claiming to have once been a truck driver, RadarOnline.com has learned.
At a campaign event in Tampa on Tuesday, Biden was discussing his staunch pro-union stance when an appreciative audience member shouted out, "The only reason I have a pension is because of you."
The supporter seemed to be referencing the $36 billion in federal aid the president devoted to preventing pension cuts for more than 350,000 union workers and retirees.
"Well, we did get that done," Biden replied, adding, "Besides, I used to drive an 18-wheeler."
Biden has made the same claim before, while touring a Mack Trucks facility in July 2021.
“I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man,” the president said at the time, adding, “I got to.”
A few months later, in November, he told students at Dakota County Technical College in Minnesota: "I used to drive a tractor trailer, so I know a little bit about driving big trucks."
"I only did it for part of a summer, but I got my license anyway," the president continued.
CNN, PolitiFact and Snopes have called out the president for not being truthful about these accounts, however.
"Biden’s claim remains untrue. There is no evidence he ever drove an 18-wheeler," CNN reported on Wednesday.
The White House previously told the outlet that Biden had worked as a school bus driver in the past, and that as a senator in 1973, he once spent a night riding in a cargo truck.
PolitiFact corroborated CNN's reports, noting that the president's stint as a bus driver took place while he was a law student at Syracuse University in the 1960s.
National Guard historians have listed "12 times since the enactment of the 1952 Armed Forces Reserve Act when the Guard was called into duty and operated under the control of the president."
The ride in a tractor-trailer from Delaware to Ohio in '73 was Biden's "closest experience" to being a truck driver, PolitiFact also reported.
According to Snopes, the president embarked on the trip because he "wanted a firsthand account from the truckers, who say they carry 50 percent of all the goods shipped within the United States."
The president revisited his apparently skewed version of events after raising eyebrows for comments he made in Pennsylvania last week.
Biden denied having ever earned $400k per year, but CNN wrote in another report that he has earned this much annually as president, and that he "made millions" in 2017 and 2018.
He also told a disturbing story about his uncle's death in a World War II plane crash, suggesting the plane was shot down and his uncle's body was eaten by cannibals. However, the Defense Department's account of the incident in 1944 contradicts this narrative, per CNN.
While both candidates in the upcoming presidential election have been scrutinized for their truthfulness, Biden has paled in comparison to his rival, Donald Trump.
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In February, PolitiFact published its 1,000th fact-check of a Trump claim that it rated "Pants on Fire" — the outlet's designation for an outright lie.
The former president and presumed 2024 Republican nominee claimed that Democrats used the Covid-19 pandemic to "cheat" during the 2020 election. He made the comments during his New Hampshire primary victory speech in January.
"It's not unusual for politicians of both parties to mislead, exaggerate or make stuff up," PolitiFact reported. "But American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy."
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