President Biden was sharply criticized for his rambling remarks commemorating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that included a joke about playing football and a false claim that he was at ground zero in Manhattan the day after the World Trade Center collapsed.
Taking the stage at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, Mr. Biden began his remarks honoring the 3,000 people killed in the attack by noting that he and Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, a Republican, came from the same hometown.
“Governor Dunleavy, it’s good to see you. The governor and I have something in common: we’re both from Scranton, Pennsylvania. I wish I had him playing on my high school ball club when I was playing. I could’ve been an All-American having you in front of me,” Mr. Biden said.
Shortly after the joke, Mr. Biden acknowledged the day was “solemn” and “hallowed.”
The remark drew a swift backlash on social media.
“Gross. He can’t not make it about himself, can he?” GOP rapid response director Jake Schneider commented on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I just assume anymore that any anecdote is fabricated and that nobody cares that he fakes all of his efforts to ’connect’ with an audience,” The Federalist columnist Eddie Scarry wrote on X.
“OMG. @POTUS begins his 9/11 speech talking about how he could have been an All-American…” podcast host and former NBC sports reporter Michele Tafoya wrote.
Mr. Biden also falsely said he toured the World Trade Center ruins on Sept. 12, 2001, when his own memoir places him in Washington, D.C., on that day.
“Ground Zero in New York — I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building. And I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell,” Mr. Biden said.
But his 2007 memoir “Promises to Keep” offers a different account: Mr. Biden described stepping off the train at Union Station in Washington on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and witnessing “a brown haze of smoke hanging in the otherwise crystal-clear sky beyond the Capitol dome.”
“I headed back to the Capitol the next morning” — Sept. 12, 2001,” he wrote.
The book doesn’t mention any trip to ground zero, much less on the day after the attacks.
A report in Mr. Biden’s hometown newspaper in Wilmington, Delaware, from Sept. 12, 2001, says: “Delaware Sen. Joe Biden spent Wednesday exactly where he wanted — in the U.S. Senate.”
In addition, C-SPAN footage from that day shows Mr. Biden giving a speech in the U.S. Senate.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.
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