Biden Repeats Comically False Claim That He ‘Travelled Over 17,000 Miles’ With China’s Xi Jinping

President Joe Biden repeated an odd claim that has been repeatedly fact-checked regarding how much time he’s spent on the proverbial road with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

The claim was apparently ad-libbed. Here are Biden’s prepared remarks, provided by the White House:

We welcome ideas.

But, the rest of the world isn’t waiting for us. Doing nothing is not an option.

We can’t be so busy competing with each other that we forget the competition is with the rest of the world to win the 21st Century.

To win that competition for the future, we also need to make a once-in-a-generation investment in our families – in our children.

That’s why I’m introducing the American Families Plan tonight, which addresses four of the biggest challenges facing American families today.

Amid those comments, the president added a little anecdote about Xi:

Secretary Blinken will tell you I spent a lot of time with President Xi. Traveled over 17,000 miles with him. Spent over 24 hours in private discussions with him. When he called to congratulate me, we had a two hour discussion. He’s deadly earnest about becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world.

Biden has repeated that 17,000 miles claim so many times that the Washington Post conducted an investigation into what the hell he’s talking about. The paper found that the claim to be false, and its fact checker awarded it Three Pinocchios.

The Post also reported that a White House official conceded that the claim is “not accurate.”

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