Joe Biden Again Exaggerates 2004 House Fire: ‘We Almost Lost a Couple Firefighters’

President Joe Biden again exaggerated the story of his 2004 house fire on Tuesday, explaining to firefighters at an event the devastation to his home caused by a lightning strike.

The president recounted his version of the story during a virtual speech from his artificial White House video set to a group of firefighters at the Summit on Fire Prevention and Control.

He said:

What happened was I was doing Meet the Press and lightning struck in a little pond behind my house, came up through the ground, into the air conditioning system, ended up with generating thick black smoke of literally of those proportions and from the basement to the third floor, the attic, everything was ruined.

Biden also claimed the fire almost killed some of the firefighters who put out the fire.

“The kitchen floor, we almost lost a couple firefighters, they tell me, because the kitchen floor was burning between beams in the house in addition to almost collapsed into the basement,” he said.

Biden’s version of the story is sharply different from firefighters on the scene speaking to the press.

The lightning strike started a small fire in the kitchen, Cranston Heights Fire Company Chief George Lamborn said, and noted they were able to keep the fire from spreading to the rest of the house.

“Luckily, we got it pretty early,” the fire chief told the Associated Press at the time. “The fire was under control in 20 minutes.”

Biden exaggerated his story again even after the New York Times featured his comments in a story about how his stories frequently fail to represent the truth of what happened.

But Biden keeps adding fuel to the fire in his exaggeration of the story.

The president also exaggerated the details of the fire while speaking to Florida hurricane victims last week.

“I know from experience how much anxiety and fear concern are to other people,” he said. “We didn’t lose our whole home but lightning struck and we lost an awful lot of it about 15 years ago.”

Biden has repeatedly exaggerated the details of the fire during other speeches, noting in January that he “almost” lost his home.

In November 2021, Biden claimed his wife almost died.

“I know, having had a house burn down with my wife in it — she got out safely, God willing — that having a significant portion of it burn, I can tell: 10 minutes makes a hell of a difference,” he said.