Exclusive: Here’s What Biden Probably Meant When He Joked About ‘The First Time I Got Arrested’ During Voting Rights Speech

President Joe Biden drew laughs and raised some eyebrows during his voting rights speech with a joke about “the first time I got arrested,” and Mediaite has obtained previously unpublished transcripts that suggest what the president could have been talking about.

During the president’s fiery speech in Atlanta Tuesday afternoon, he injected a bit of levity into an emotional section about civil rights heroes:

I did not live the struggle of Douglass, Tubman, King, Lewis, Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, and countless others — known and unknown.

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. (Laughter.)

You think I’m kidding, man. (Laughter.) It seems like yesterday the first time I got arrested. Anyway — (laughter).

That reference to the “first time” he was arrested caused some to recall earlier controversies over Biden’s inaccurate recollections of his experiences with the civil rights movement, and an incident in South Africa that he described as an “arrest” but later walked back.

But previously-unpublished transcripts provided by a White House official suggest the president was referring to an incident that he has spoken publicly about on at least three occasions.

It was an anecdote in which Biden sought advice from his mother, the late Catherine Eugenia Finnegan, about running as then-Senator Barack Obama’s running mate. Mrs. Finnegan reminded him of a childhood event that involved Biden being carted home by the police.

During a visit to a Nevada church in 2020, Biden told the story this way:

We sat on the back porch and talked about it. My mom hadn’t said a word. She was 92 at the time. And I turned, mom, I said “honey you haven’t said anything.”

She said “Joey, let me get this straight.” She said “you just…I called you about a month ago.”

She lived with us. “And I asked about a month ago, what Barack was like and you said he was a man of great honor, a brilliant man, and so on and so forth.”

I said “yeah.”

She said “Joey, remember when they desegregated the neighborhood called Lynnfield? You were 13, I told you not to go there, all those people were protesting, and you got arrested standing on the porch with the Black family?”

And he told the story twice in 2018, first in October at a speech to the Economic Club of Southwest Michigan:

She said, “Joey, didn’t I call you about a month ago and ask you about Barack?”

I said, “Yeah, mom.”

She said, “Didn’t you say to me you thought he was really bright and had a great deal of integrity and would make a good President if he was the nominee.”

I said, “Yeah.”

She said, “Joey, remember at 15 years old and that real estate agent sold a house to the black couple in Linfield.”

The neighboring, this was in suburban sprawl, the neighboring neighborhood.

“I told you not to go down there because of the protests, and you went down and you got arrested because you were standing on the porch with the black couple?”

I said, “Yeah, mom. I remember that.”

And he told it in December of 2018 at the University of Utah:

And so they all wanted me to run.

And I still did not want to do it.

And I turned to my mom and was sitting there to my right, and I says, “Honey, you haven’t said anything.

Well, what do you think?”

And I shouldn’t have asked.

She looked at me, I swear to god this is a true story.

She looked at me and said, “Joey, remember I called you about a month, six weeks ago and asked you about Barack, and you told me he had great integrity and he was really, really smart, and you thought he could be a good president?”

I said, “Yeah mom, I remember that.”

“Do you remember when you were 14 years old,” and this, Delaware has the eighth largest black population in America as percent of population. And the suburbs were, the nearest suburbs were being developed, farmland was turned into housing projects and the like.

We lived in a neighborhood called Mayfield, the next neighborhood was called Lynnfield.

All the same kind of homes in each of the developments.

And a home in Lynnfield, I guess, I think I was 14, was sold to an African American couple, and there were people coming out of the city protesting and marching.

They didn’t want anybody in the neighborhood.

And my mother told me not to go down there.

She said, “Remember I told you not to go down, and the police brought you back because you were standing on the front porch with the black couple?”

And I said, “Yeah, mom, I remember.”

In Biden’s telling of his conversation with his mother, Mrs. Finnegan says the police brought him home, making it unlikely that a record of such a detention would exist.

Watch the clip above via CBS News.