CNN’s Dale Delivers Laundry List of Biden ‘Inventing’ Lies About His ‘Own Biography’ in Brutal 9/11 Fact Check

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale this week said that President Joe Biden has an “unfortunate pattern” of making false claims, including about visiting Ground Zero the day after the terror attacks on 9/11.

Anchor Brianna Keilar introduced the segment about Biden’s false claims on CNN News Central by showing a clip of the president earlier this week, the 22nd anniversary of the horrific and terrifying events of September 11, 2001.

Administration spokesman John Kirby awkwardly dodged a question about Biden’s false claim this week, and other stories like it have come up before, as CNN noted in the segment.

Keilar played a clip of Biden saying he visited the site the next day, Sept. 12, “But that’s not actually true” as she introduced Dale to fact-check the story.

“When did Biden actually visit Ground Zero?” Keilar asked.

“He went nine days after the attack, Brianna, September 20th, 2001, when he went with a bipartisan delegation of senators,” Dale replied. “I asked the White House last night about this claim. They provided a photo of him there on September 20th, reiterated that he was there that day.”

Importantly, Dale did not take the route that one might anticipate from the press and simply correct the date for the Democrat. Instead, he pointed out the context and significance of the lie, making clear why it matters in a key exchange with Keilar.

“I think some people might say, oh, okay, you know, he was there, you know…,” said Dale.

“Just days, a matter of days,” said Keilar to provide an example.

“Nine days later, maybe he forgot,” said Dale, continuing to articulate the objections one could expect.

“And maybe he forgot,” he said. “But look, it’s 9/11. It’s sensitive. He’s speaking to military and first responders. So, I think the facts matter.”

Not trivial, not a minor clerical oversight, but misrepresentation on an incredibly important and solemn event.

The two provided other examples, and Dale said “this president has a pattern at this point of either inventing or embellishing stories about his own past, his biography.”

“Whatever his intentions, whether it’s, you know, foggy memory about stuff that’s going on decades ago or deliberate embellishment, this is an unfortunate pattern that keeps coming up again and again with Joe Biden,” he concluded.

One might note that, like the 9/11 lie, Biden’s false claims are almost always designed to put him at the center of important events, to make him a part of whatever is of significance to his target audience. A pattern of borrowing credibility on any given subject.

KEILAR: President Biden is facing criticism for falsely claiming that he was in New York City at ground Zero the day after 911. These are comments that he made yesterday during a speech to military and first responders as he was marking the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

BIDEN (CLIP): Crowds are in New York. And I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building, I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell. It looked so devastating because the way you could see the way from where you could stand.

KEILAR: But that’s not actually true. And now the White House is weighing in. For more on this, let’s turn to CNN’s Daniel Dale. He is here with a fact check. When did Biden actually visit Ground Zero?

DALE: He went nine days after the attack, Brianna, September 20th, 2001, when he went with a bipartisan delegation of senators. I asked the White House last night about this claim. They provided a photo of him there on September 20th, reiterated that he was there that day. I think some people might say, oh, okay, you know, he was there, you know…

KEILAR: Just days, a matter of days.

DALE: Nine days later, maybe he forgot. And maybe he forgot. But look, it’s 9/11. It’s sensitive. He’s speaking to military and first responders. So, I think the facts matter.

KEILAR: And he has done, I don’t know if it’s similar things? But he’s sort of told some stories that don’t line up quite like this before.

DALE: He had – this president has a pattern at this point of either inventing or embellishing stories about his own past, his biography.

He did it three times in one speech last month alone. He claimed he had witnessed a bridge collapse in Pittsburgh, when he actually showed up about 6 hours later. He claimed that his grandfather had died just days before he was born himself at the same hospital. In fact, his grandpa died more than a year before in a different state, not not the same hospital. And, and he also repeated a favorite false story that I and others have debunked over and over again about a supposed a conversation with an Amtrak train conductor he was friends with who was actually deceased at the time the conversation would have had to take place.

And that’s not all. There are some more serious ones, in my view. Previously in his presidency, he claimed at one point he’d been arrested during a civil rights protest, when in other versions of the story, he just said an officer had taken him home from a protest. He said he had visited the Pittsburgh synagogue where worshipers were killed in a 2018 mass shooting. In fact, he’d actually spoken to the rabbi, but never, but never went. And he’s made a whole bunch of others, too. He said at one point — Republicans like to bring this up — he said that he used to drive a tractor trailer, used to drive an 18-wheeler. Never happened.

The White House later clarified he used to drive a school bus at one point, for, as a as a job, briefly. School bus, of course, not an 18-wheeler.

So, whatever his intentions, whether it’s, you know, foggy memory about stuff that’s going on decades ago or deliberate embellishment, this is an unfortunate pattern that keeps coming up again and again with Joe Biden.

Watch the clip above via CNN.