President Joe Biden, undoubtedly in a bid to seem more relatable to certain voting constituents, has long had a tendency to tell tall tales with clearly embellished details, and one particularly dubious story he has repeated multiple times involves his alleged experience as a truck driver.
Biden returned to that same story again Monday at a White House event, only this time in a slightly revised version that added more details, such as a claim that he had even obtained a commercial license at one point, Breitbart reported.
Except, there is literally no evidence whatsoever that Biden — a career politician — was ever a commercially licensed truck driver.
Biden claims he was once a licensed commercial truck driver
President Biden held an event Monday on the South Lawn of the White House to celebrate and highlight the efforts made by his administration to address supply chain issues and a growing shortage of experienced and qualified licensed truck drivers.
“I used to drive a truck; it’s a long story. Anyway,” Biden said during his remarks. Then motioning to a pair of Mack trucks parked behind him, jokingly added, “I thought I was going to get to drive one of these suckers today, but — anyway, it’s another story, too.”
A few moments later, the president said, “I’m going to just digress for one second. I — I got a commercial license because my dad used to run an automobile agency. And I used to have to go up to the body shop up in Philadelphia from Wilmington. And when they’d order a trailer or a cab, I’d just — they’d sell the cab. And so, I had to have a license to be able to drive it up and back.”
He then proceeded to tell a different tale about trucks — one he’s told on occasion before — that was in reference to a time in the 1970s when he had gone for a ride-along with a trucker delivering a load of goods from Delaware to Ohio. He again added more never-before-heard details, though, this time in regard to a driver named “Big Mama” who the president claimed was “the first woman trucker I met.”
“Fact-checker” websites have previously rated Biden’s truck driving claims as “false”
As Breitbart noted, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that Biden ever obtained a Class A commercial driver’s license, which is what he would need to drive an 18-wheeler or semi-truck or tractor-trailer or big rig or whatever term one wants to use for commercial trucks.
Furthermore, even left-leaning “fact-checker” websites have previously declared Biden’s claimed experience as a truck driver to be “false.”
In July 2021, while touring a Mack trucks facility in Pennsylvania, Biden claimed, “I used to drive an 18-wheeler,” but according to Snopes, that claim was “false” and likely an embellishment of the above-referenced ride-along with an actual trucker in 1973.
In November 2021, while at a technical college in Minnesota, Biden again claimed, “I used to drive a tractor-trailer, so I know a little bit about driving big trucks,” and added, “I only did it for part of a summer, but I got my license anyway.”
PolitiFact ruled that claim to be “false” and determined that the “part of a summer” bit was likely in reference to an also dubious claim from Biden that he once drove school buses while in law school — a job that would have required a Class B commercial license, Breitbart noted, of which there doesn’t appear to be any record.