An anecdote that President Joe Biden shared last week to mark the 50th anniversary of Amtrak has come under scrutiny due to inconsistencies that make the story impossible to have unfolded as he described.
Biden’s tale of a train conductor who, in 2013 or 2014, congratulated him during a trip home to visit his sick mother on traveling 1.5 million miles via rail was supposed to illustrate his long-standing ties to Amtrak. After his election to the Senate in 1972, Biden was well known for his daily commutes to Washington from Delaware on the train — earning him the nickname “Amtrak Joe” and inextricably tying his political image to the rails.
The president spoke Friday in Philadelphia to celebrate Amtrak’s anniversary and promote his infrastructure proposal, which would inject $80 billion into the organization.
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In doing so, he launched into a story about an encounter that he said occurred in his “fourth or fifth year” as vice president, which would have been 2013 or 2014.
“My mom was sick, and I’d come — try to come home almost every weekend as vice president to see her,” he said.
Biden said a train conductor named Angelo Negri approached him on the trip to praise him for having traveled more miles on Amtrak, by Negri’s calculation, than he had on Air Force Two. Biden said Negri was prompted by a recently published article noting the then-vice president had, at that point, traveled 1.3 million miles on Air Force Two.
But Negri’s obituary shows the Amtrak conductor retired in 1993, long before Biden was vice president. Negri died in 2014.
Biden’s mother died before his fourth or fifth year as vice president. She died in 2010.
And Biden did not pass the 1 million mile mark on Air Force Two until late 2015 — long after the supposed remark from his conductor friend.
Biden’s attachment to Amtrak through the years has been well documented. In 2009, he and former President Barack Obama rode the train to Washington ahead of their inauguration.
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Biden launched his first bid for the White House in 1987 at a Delaware train station.
Throughout his Senate career, which began only two years after Amtrak was founded, he repeatedly pushed for funding for the trains that he loved.
