President Joe Biden recently appeared on “The Howard Stern Show” where he recounted a familiar story about supposedly getting arrested while trying to defend the civil rights of Black Americans. Biden shared this story while discussing his mother’s support for his decision to accept Barack Obama’s 2008 offer to be his running mate, citing her encouragement to not turn down the opportunity from the first Black president. However, there is no evidence to support Biden’s claim of being arrested during a civil rights protest, as fact-checkers from The Washington Post and PolitiFact discovered when they examined this story in 2022. Biden has told variations of this story in the past, with some versions omitting any mention of an arrest and instead saying that police simply took him home that day.
In the conversations with Oprah Winfrey during the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden told a different version of the story where he mentioned the police escorting him home from the protest because they thought he would get in trouble, without any mention of an arrest. While the details of Biden’s story have varied over time, there has been no mention of an arrest in any of his books or memoirs about this particular protest. The events Biden described align with protests that took place in early 1959, near his home in Delaware, where tensions were high over a Black couple moving into a predominantly White neighborhood. However, records from the Wilmington News Journal show that the arrests made that day were of individuals from the anti-integration crowd outside the Black couple’s home, with no indication that Biden was among those arrested.
Given the passage of over 60 years since these events took place and the lack of concrete evidence to support his claims, it is impossible to definitively prove whether Biden was present at the protest involving the Black couple in the late 1950s. Biden’s recent false claims about his personal history, including statements about driving an 18-wheeler and never earning $400,000 in a year, have raised questions about his credibility. In his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden also made a claim about being “arrested” as a US senator while attempting to visit Nelson Mandela during his imprisonment in South Africa, a claim that was debunked by fact-checkers.
The inconsistencies in Biden’s stories about his past, including the recent claim of being arrested during a civil rights protest, call into question the accuracy of his recollections. While the sentiment behind his stories about standing up for civil rights and supporting marginalized communities is admirable, the lack of verifiable evidence raises doubts about the validity of these anecdotes. Regardless of Biden’s intentions in sharing these stories, the importance of maintaining accuracy and honesty in public statements, especially from elected officials, cannot be overstated. As Biden continues to be scrutinized for his past statements, it remains to be seen how these revelations will impact his reputation and credibility in the eyes of the public.
