President Joe Biden claimed on Wednesday that he once drove an 18-wheeler truck, but his remark—made during a visit to a Mack Truck factory in Lower Macungie Township, Pennsylvania—quickly garnered a skeptical reaction.
In audio recorded by local news channel WFMZ-TV, Biden can be heard off camera telling workers at Mack Truck Lehigh Valley Operations: “I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man […] I got to.”
This claim is, like many of the Leader of the Free World’s observations, unmoored from reality. Apparently back in 1973, Biden took a long ride with a truck driver, but there’s no evidence he ever drove the rig:
Zach Parkinson, director of RNC Research, also questioned the president’s claim, sharing a 1973 opinion piece written by Biden, who was then a first-term senator.
In that article, Biden talked about how he had ridden in a “47,000-pound cargo truck” on a 500-mile-plus trip from Delaware to Ohio.
“There is zero evidence that Biden ‘used to drive an 18 wheeler,'” Parkinson tweeted.
“The extent of Biden’s trucking experience is that he **rode in** a truck once, for one night in 1973 (he made sure to return home by plane though).”
Truck drivers and CB radios were a thing back in the 1970s and an advertising guy from Omaha named Bill Fries had a big hit single under the name C.W. McCall. The song “Convoy” made it to #1 on the country and the pop charts in the early part of 1976 and it led to a huge rise in sales for CB radios, which had been, up to that time, primarily a tool for truck drivers and other people in the transportation industry. The song was catchy and the trucker jargon lyrics were entertaining to hear coming through on the AM radio of your ’75 Cutlass:
Well, we rolled up Interstate 44
Like a rocket sled on rails
We tore up all of our swindle sheets
And left ’em settin’ on the scales
By the time we hit that Chi-town
Them bears was a-gettin’ smart
They’d brought up some reinforcements
From the Illinois National Guard
The amusing thing about Fries/ C.W. McCall is he was never a truck driver, either:
“I was never a truck driver, even though people think I must have been,” Fries says. “I wanted to sound authentic. I wanted to talk like people talk. If you want to talk to truckers, you have to sound like a trucker.”
Biden has been straining for authenticity for 50 years now. He’s truck driver, a tough guy from Scranton, friends with Corn Pop and God only knows what else. And he has access to the nuclear codes.
Come on and join our convoy
Ain’t nothin’ gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin’ convoy
‘Cross the USA
Sleep tight, everyone.
I don’t know why Biden bothers except that he’s too old and senile to stop trying. The Democrats are no longer run by nor marketed to blue-collar workers. In point of fact, many of these workers have noticed that they are now considered to be the enemy.
Interesting that Biden would try this, considering how he slandered Curtis Dunn posthumously for years.
It also sounded good coming from the AM radio, with reverb, in a 1968 Mustang GT. Funny you mentioned a 75 Cutlass. Two days after I got out of the Air Force, circa May 1976, I drove my mom to McCarthy Olds to pick up hers. Believe it or not, that was only the second new car she ever owned. The first one was right after she married my dad. A 1954 Ford Customline, which they bought three weeks before I was born.
A certain latitude is given to oldsters who get their facts confused, speak in falsehoods, lose their train of thought. Joe Biden has done the first two all of his professional life and he is President of the freaking United States.
Sam Peckinpaugh made a movie based on that convoy song, with Chris Kristopherson as the Rubber Duck, Ali McGraw as the Duck’s squeeze and Earnest Borgnine as Dirty Ernie.
Lots of cop cars flying through the air in super slo-mo, trucks smashing through old rural towns (contributing to the loss of many collectable old signs), even army tanks.
They had to do it because…checks notes… the 70’s.
Mr. McCall became mayor of one of the most beautiful towns in Colorado, Ouray.
Perhaps Joe meant to say he rode shotgun.
And, funny, you have a song going to #1 that’s about regular folks telling the overbearing government they’ve had enough. Insurrection at the intersection!
Based on the weight mentioned and how many times they stopped for fuel, it wasn’t even an “18-wheeler.”
Biden’s upcoming whoppers:
“I hit a golf ball twice as far as Neil Armstrong while we were together on the moon.”
“I composed the opening riff to “Layla” but made the mistake of playing it for Eric Clapton.”
“On one particularly humid summer night in Scranton I invented cold beer.”
And most unbelievably of all:
“I won the presidency fair and square.”
And don’t leave out Chip Davis, he of Mannheim Steamroller fame, who wrote the music.
And spare me the ignorant cries (regarding Mannheim) of “its all synths”. I saw them play live; plenty of lute, oboe, violin and viola, harpsichord and recorder, flute and piccolo, French horn and piano.
Some of the most beautiful Christmas music I have ever heard.
“The character of Oliver in “Love Story” was based on me.” (Oh, wait, it was Al Gore who said that.)
Mr. Biden has a politician’s disregard for the truth combined with senility.
It is not a pretty picture.