(Daily Mail) Joe Biden used the 9/11 anniversary to claim he recalled ‘standing there the next day and looking at the building’ in New York – when, in fact, he was in Washington, DC, on September 12, 2001.
Biden, 80, faced criticism for becoming the first president in the 22 years since the attacks not to spend the anniversary at one of the three sites of 9/11 plane crashes.
He compounded the criticism on Monday by falsely claiming he was at the Twin Towers the day after the attack – when in his own autobiography and video from the Senate floor put him in Washington, DC.
‘Some have said yesterday and today all has changed for America.,’ the then-Senator from Delaware said from the floor of the Senate the day after the attacks. ‘I pray that is not true. I pray that is not true…The one thing we can not allow to change are the values upon which this country is built.
‘For if that were to occur, then they would be able to declare victory, genuine victory.’
Biden also embellished on Monday his recollections of the fateful day, claiming he saw a ‘fireball’ at the Pentagon on 9/11, when in his book he describes it as ‘a brown haze of smoke.’
Joe Biden is seen on Monday, the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, speaking to troops in Anchorage, Alaska. He is the first president not to spend the anniversary at the site of one of the three plane crashes
Planes are pictured crashing into the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001
Joe Biden is seen speaking to reporters outside Congress on September 11, 2001
Biden, seen on September 11, 2001, was chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at the time of the attacks
Speaking to troops in Anchorage, Alaska, on Monday, en route home from the G20 summit in Vietnam, Biden told them about his memories from 22 years ago, with typical Biden exaggeration.
Speaking to troops in Anchorage, Alaska, on Monday, en route home from the G20 summit in Vietnam, Biden told them about his memories from 22 years ago, with typical Biden exaggeration.
‘The plume of fire that shot up in the sky in Pentagon – I remember seeing as I got off the Amtrak train on my way to work in the United States Senate,’ he said.
Yet in his autobiography, he wrote that the scene was significantly less dramatic: ‘I could see a brown haze of smoke hanging in the otherwise crystal-clear sky beyond the Capitol dome.’
Biden, who at the time was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was photographed on 9/11 speaking to reporters in front of the Capitol.
In his 2007 book Promises to Keep, Biden wrote he was in Washington, DC, the day after the attack: ‘I headed back to the Capitol the next morning,’ he noted.
A Gannett News Wire report from September 12, 2001, cited by The New York Post,backed up the version in his biography, beginning: ‘Delaware Sen. Joe Biden spent Wednesday exactly where he wanted — in the U.S. Senate.’
Archived CSPAN footage also showed Biden speaking from the Senate floor on September 12, 2001, as he and 99 other Senators denounced the cowardly attacks.
‘This is not a struggle about ideology, this is not a struggle over religion,’ Biden said in his Senate speech, ‘this is a struggle between civilization and barbarity. Let there be no doubt the United States and the civilized nations of the world will unite and win this struggle.’
On Monday, Biden told a dramatically different story about the day after.
‘Ground Zero in New York – I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building,’ he said.
‘And I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell.
‘It looked so devastating because the way you could, from where you could stand.’
Biden, in his book, describes speaking to University of Delaware students on September 19, 2001. The next day, he visited New York City
Biden visited Ground Zero nine days after the attacks, on September 20, 2001, and was photographed touring the site with fellow senators Ted Kennedy and Barbara Mikulski – but Biden does not mention that in his book.
His book does, however, mentions visiting a mosque in Newark, New Jersey on September 21, 2001.
Biden (center) is seen visiting Ground Zero on September 20, 2001 with fellow senators Ted Kennedy (left) and Barbara Mikulski (center, in poncho)
Biden’s 2007 book says that he was in Washington, DC, on September 11 and September 12, 2001
Biden is known for his exaggerations, and his contorted, misremembered stories.
The president, who joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at age 32, and became its chair in 2001, has frequently spoken about his ‘arrest’ by the South African police.
On February 11, 2020, Biden told a South Carolina audience that he had been arrested in the African nation.
‘This day, 30 years ago, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison and entered into discussions about apartheid,’ he told the crowd.
‘I had the great honor of meeting him. I had the great honor of being arrested with our U.N. ambassador on the streets of Soweto trying to get to see him on Robben Island.’
Biden did not specify the year, but was in South Africa in 1977.
