Joe Biden is facing mockery after he told a fanciful and totally false story about being arrested during the civil rights movement.
No less than far-left CNN "fact checked" Biden over the tall tale, which has become a part of his standard political repertory over the years despite a lack of evidence.
Through the years, Biden has told different versions of the story, citing his mother as the source.
Biden told Howard Stern that he was arrested standing on a black family's porch during a racial integration protest when he was young.
“She said, ‘Joey, let me — remember’ — true story, she said — ‘Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood … suburbia — and I told you — and there was a black family moving in and there was — people were down there protesting; I told you not to go down there and you went down, remember that? And you got arrested standing on the porch with a black family? And they brought you back, the police?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, Mom, I remember that.’”
Research into Biden's claim has found no evidence that he was arrested. Biden has also never mentioned this apparently pivotal event in his memoirs.
In some versions of the story, Biden says police escorted him home without arresting him.
Biden may have inserted himself into a real-life event that he had nothing to do with, which would not be terribly surprising.
Per the Washington Post, there were protests outside the home of a black couple in a neighborhood nine miles from where Biden lived when he was 16. Biden has placed his age as anywhere from 13 to 15 when he was supposedly arrested.
According to a contemporaneous article from the Wilmington News Journal, there were seven arrests on the day of the protest, all of individuals protesting against racial integration.
Biden has long drawn criticism for spinning imaginative, self-aggrandizing narratives of heroics deeds, including a bogus tale about getting arrested while trying to meet Nelson Mandela.
While Biden paints himself as a champion for racial equality, he recently drew a sharp rebuke from for suggesting that his uncle was eaten by cannibals in Papua New Guinea.
Biden has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric aimed at the black community. While campaigning in 2020, Biden infamously claimed that blacks who doubt their support for him "ain't black."
Tying himself to the civil rights movement, even dishonestly, is a cheap way for Biden to shore up his base ahead of a daunting re-election fight.
