“I did not walk in the shoes of generations of students who walked these grounds. But I walked other grounds. Because I’m so damn old, I was there as well. You think I’m kidding, man. It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested.”
It was just a throwaway line, made to laughter, in an important presidential speech. But here’s the president, saying he once had been arrested, during a section that recalled some of the heroes of the civil rights movement. He even suggested he had been arrested more than once, as he recalled it was the “first time” he had been arrested.
It’s certainly not the first time he’s said he’s been arrested. Previously, he has said he was arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela in South Africa (Four Pinocchios false) and for trying to enter an all-female dorm room at Ohio University (Partly False, according to USA Today). He has also suggested he was arrested for wandering onto the Senate floor as a “star-struck kid,” but most times he has indicated he was just given a warning.
Biden’s comment in Atlanta appears to refer to a story he has told on at least five occasions, each time attributing it to his late mother. He says she reminded him of this incident during a family discussion in 2008 about whether he should accept Barack Obama’s offer to be Obama’s running mate. Biden’s mother, Catherine “Jean” Biden, died in 2010. Biden told this story many years later, “a true story,” as he put it, though with slight differences in each retelling.
By JAMELLE BOUIE Donald Trump knew as well as anyone that he had lost the 2020 presidential election fair and square. He knew there was no conspiracy to commit voter fraud — no mysterious mail bal...