BREAKING NEWS – Washington, D.C. – President Biden told a heartfelt story last week about an Amtrak conductor congratulating him for riding more than 1.5 million miles – but the details of the story don’t seem to add up.
“There was an article, I guess my fourth or fifth year as vice president, saying Biden travels 1,300,000 miles on Air Force One [Two],” Biden began. “I used to – the Secret Service didn’t like it – but I used to like to take the train home. My mom was sick and I used to try to come home almost every weekend as vice president to see her. I got on the train and Angelo Negri came up and he goes, ‘Joey, baby,’ and he grabbed my cheek like he always did. I thought he was going to get shot. I’m serious. I said, ‘No, no, he’s a friend.’”
Biden’s comments have flown under the media radar so far. However, a few elements of the story seemed out of place. Biden entered the fourth year of his term as vice president around 2013, and Negri’s obituary states he retired from Amtrak in 1993, while Biden was still a senator. Meanwhile, Biden’s mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, died in 2010.
He gave an explanation while taking questions from a few reporters. “Yes it’s true that my mother died in 2010, so obviously in 2013 she wasn’t feeling well. And secondly, I made a slight mistake regarding Angelo Negri. I now believe that it was not Amtrak, but I saw him either on a Lionel Train or a Lionel Richie.”