Biden’s Debunked Amtrak Anecdote: A Closer Look

Former President Joe Biden recently recounted a story involving an Amtrak conductor during his appearance on Jay Leno’s Garage YouTube show. Biden shared a tale about his conductor friend Angelo Negri approaching him after reading an article that stated Biden had accumulated over 1.2 million miles on Air Force Two. According to Biden, Negri grabbed his cheek, in the presence of Secret Service agents, to point out that he had traveled nearly double that distance by train.

The story is highly questionable. Negri, the mentioned conductor, passed away before Biden reached the 1.2 million-mile mark on Air Force Two. Moreover, Negri retired from Amtrak in 1993, long before Biden served as vice president. Biden has faced several public fact-checks about this anecdote from sources like the Associated Press and CNN.

Details of Biden’s Amtrak Story

Biden, now 83, has repeated the anecdote multiple times publicly. On the show with Leno, he described traveling from Washington, D.C., to Delaware to see his sick mother, Catherine Eugenia “Jean” Finnegan Biden, who passed in 2010. He depicted being surrounded by about 30 Secret Service agents when a conductor, identified as Negri in other versions of the story, grabbed his face and addressed the Air Force Two article.

The conductor reportedly told Biden, “Do you realize how many miles you’ve ridden on Amtrak? We calculated it: Your total as a senator for 36 years was 298 miles a day on average. You averaged 22 trips a year. Thirty-six years times that. And that’s not counting your time as vice president. You’ve traveled 1,200,000 miles already. I don’t want to hear more about Air Force Two.”

Fact-Checking the Anecdote

“It’s possible Biden logged over a million miles on the rails by late 2015,” according to CNN reports and David Lienemann, his official photographer.

Biden may have maintained communication with Negri post-retirement. In 2021, Olga Betz, Negri’s stepdaughter, remarked that the men had shared friendship and mutual admiration.

However, the conversation concerning the Air Force Two milestone could not have taken place with Negri, given his death in May 2014, more than a year before Biden hit the flight milestone.

Biden might have conversed with a different conductor around late 2015 or early 2016 and mixed up his experiences. Nonetheless, traveling to visit his dying mother at that time is implausible because she had already died.