Biden claims he was at Floor Zero the day after 9/11 – regardless of his personal guide saying he was within the nation’s capital

Joe Biden used the 9/11 anniversary to say he recalled ‘standing there the subsequent day and searching on the constructing’ in New York – when in reality he was in Washington DC.

Biden, 80, confronted criticism for changing into the primary president within the 22 years for the reason that assaults to not spend the anniversary at one of many three websites of 9/11 aircraft crashes.

He compounded the criticism on Monday by falsely claiming he was on the Twin Towers the day after the assault – when in his personal autobiography he writes that he was in Washington DC.

Biden additionally embellished on Monday his recollections of the day, claiming he noticed a ‘fireball’ on the Pentagon on 9/11, when in his guide he describes it as ‘a brown haze of smoke’.

Joe Biden is seen on Monday, the twenty second anniversary of 9/11, talking to troops in Anchorage, Alaska. He’s the primary president to not spend the anniversary on the web site of one of many three aircraft crashes

Planes are pictured crashing into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001

Joe Biden is seen talking to reporters exterior Congress on September 11, 2001

Biden, seen on September 11, 2001, was chair of the Senate Overseas Relations Committee on the time of the assaults

Talking to troops in Anchorage, Alaska, en route residence from the G20 summit in Vietnam, Biden advised them about his recollections from 22 years in the past, with typical Biden exaggeration.

‘The plume of fireplace that shot up within the sky in Pentagon – I keep in mind seeing as I received off the Amtrak prepare on my approach to work in the USA Senate,’ he mentioned.

But in his autobiography, he wrote that the scene was considerably much less dramatic: ‘I may see a brown haze of smoke hanging within the in any other case crystal-clear sky past the Capitol dome.’

Biden, who on the time was chairman of the Senate Overseas Relations Committee, was photographed on 9/11 talking to reporters in entrance of the Capitol.

In his 2007 guide Guarantees to Maintain, Biden writes that he was in Washington DC the day after the assault: ‘I headed again to the Capitol the subsequent morning,’ he writes.

A Gannett Information Wire report from September 12, 2001, cited by The New York Post, backed up the model in his biography, starting: ‘Delaware Sen. Joe Biden spent Wednesday precisely the place he wished — within the U.S. Senate.’

On Monday additionally advised a dramatically completely different story in regards to the day after.

‘Floor Zero in New York – I keep in mind standing there the subsequent day and searching on the constructing,’ he mentioned.

‘And I felt like I used to be trying by means of the gates of hell.

‘It appeared so devastating as a result of the way in which you could possibly, from the place you could possibly stand.’

Biden, in his guide, describes talking to College of Delaware college students on September 19, 2001.

Biden visited Floor Zero 9 days after the assaults, on September 20, 2001, and was photographed touring the location with fellow senators Ted Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski – however Biden doesn’t point out that in his guide.

Biden (heart) is seen visiting Floor Zero on September 20, 2001 with fellow senators Ted Kennedy (left) and Barbara Mikulski (heart, in poncho)

Biden’s 2007 guide says that he was in Washington DC on September 11 and September 12, 2001

His guide does, nonetheless, point out visiting a mosque in Newark, New Jersey on September 21, 2001.

Biden is thought for his exaggerations, and his contorted, misremembered tales.

The president, who joined the Senate Overseas Relations Committee aged 32, and have become its chair in 2001, has steadily spoken about his ‘arrest’ by the South African police.

On February 11, 2020, Biden advised a South Carolina viewers that he had been arrested within the African nation.

‘Today, 30 years in the past, Nelson Mandela walked out of jail and entered into discussions about apartheid,’ he advised the group.

‘I had the nice honor of assembly him. I had the nice honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto making an attempt to get to see him on Robben Island.’

Biden didn’t specify the 12 months, however was in South Africa in 1977.

Biden is seen in December 2013 visiting a memorial to Nelson Mandela exterior the South African embassy. Mandela died aged 95 on December 5, 2013

Mandela was held behind bars on Robben Island from 1964 to 1982 – however Robben Island is off the coast of Cape City, whereas Biden mentioned he was within the Johannesburg district of Soweto.

Later the identical month, Biden repeated the story of his arrest to a Nevada crowd at a black historical past brunch.

‘[Mandela] got here to Washington and got here to my workplace,’ Biden mentioned, throughout a presidential marketing campaign assembly in Las Vegas.

‘He threw his arms round me and mentioned, ‘I need to say thanks.’

‘I mentioned, ‘What are you thanking me for, Mr. President?’

‘He mentioned: ”You tried to see me. You bought arrested making an attempt to see me.”’

And at a second Las Vegas occasion, days later, Biden repeated the arrest story for a 3rd time.

He advised the group he ‘got here again from South Africa, making an attempt to see Nelson Mandela and getting arrested for making an attempt to see him.’

Mandela is seen throughout a joint assembly of the U.S. Congress in June 1990

Mandela in June 1990 addresses the United Nations, urging the U.N. to take care of sanctions towards South Africa till apartheid was abolished

The declare of an arrest was debunked by The New York Times in February 2020, with a number of officers and former colleagues within the Senate telling the paper they’d no recollection of the arrest.

The paper even famous that Biden’s personal accounts, in his autobiography and in his statements about Mandela, didn’t reference an arrest.

Reality-checkers, who gave Biden’s account ‘4 Pinocchios’ and declared it ‘Pants on Fireplace’, did discover that he had been separated from black colleagues when touchdown on the airport in neighboring Lesotho in December 1976.

On the time, Biden was amongst 13 members of Congress to journey to Lesotho.

‘Once I exited the aircraft I used to be directed to 1 aspect of the tarmac, whereas the African American congressmen touring with me had been despatched to the opposite aspect,’ he mentioned.

‘I refused to interrupt off, and the officers lastly relented.’

On the finish of February 2020, amid intense curiosity in whether or not he was truly arrested, Biden advised CNN that he was not.

‘Once I mentioned arrested, I meant I used to be not in a position to transfer,’ Biden mentioned, after recounting what had occurred to him.

‘Cops wouldn’t let me go along with them. I wasn’t arrested, I used to be stopped. I used to be not in a position to transfer the place I wished to go.’

He didn’t specify whether or not that encounter was in Lesotho or South Africa.

Biden has an extended historical past of exaggerating his personal biography.

He claimed in January this 12 months, whereas talking to college students of traditionally black schools in Atlanta that he was arrested throughout civil rights protests – a declare for which there isn’t a proof.

In September 2021 he advised Jewish leaders that he remembered ‘spending time at’ and ‘going to’ the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh after the mass homicide of 11 individuals there in 2018: it later emerged he by no means visited.

The White Home mentioned he was referencing a telephone name, and misspoke.