Fact Check: Joe Biden, 81, Claims He ‘Got Arrested’ During Civil Rights Movement

CLAIM: President Joe Biden, 81, recently claimed on The Howard Stern Show that he “got arrested” during the civil rights movement.

VERDICT: Likely false

There is no evidence authorities arrested Biden while defending civil rights, CNN reported:

There is no evidence Biden ever got arrested during a civil rights protest, as The Washington Post and PolitiFact found when they looked into this claim in 2022 — and Biden has at least twice told the story of his supposed presence at this particular Delaware protest without mentioning any arrest, instead claiming that the police merely took him home that day.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

Biden made the comment while speaking with Howard Stern. The president recounted what his mother purportedly claimed while urging him to take Barack Obama’s offer to become vice president. Biden’s mom, he said, urged him to accept the post.

Biden told Stern:

She said, “Joey, let me — remember” — true story, she said — “Remember when they were desegregating Lynnfield, the neighborhood … suburbia — and I told you — and there was a black family moving in and there was — people were down there protesting; I told you not to go down there and you went down, remember that? And you got arrested standing on the porch with a black family? And they brought you back, the police?” And I said, “Yeah, Mom, I remember that.”

Biden’s statement came during an interview in which he delivered outlandish statements and perhaps some lies, according to Director of Communications for the State Freedom Caucus Network Greg Price:

• He claimed he saved six people from drowning as a lifeguard.
• He claimed he received “salacious pictures” from women in the 1970s that he handed to Secret Service.
• He claimed he was a “runner-up in state scoring” in football.

He also told Stern that he would debate former President Donald Trump. Biden until then had been noncommittal about debating Trump. Trump has said he would be happy to confront Biden on his record, pledging in March to debate him anytime, anywhere.

Biden is “an elderly man with a poor memory,” according to Special Counsel Robert Hur.

Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.