Biden tells Dublin parliament fishy tale about speech to 10K fans after spotting anti-Irish signs

President Biden on Thursday told Ireland’s parliament a dubious tale about how “literally 10,000 people” were waiting to cheer on his presidential campaign — just moments after he saw anti-Irish signage at a historic Colorado train station.

Biden, speaking in Dublin, called the account “God’s truth,” though the crowd estimate appears to be a gross exaggeration and the signage in question mentioned other ethnicities including Germans, French and Italians.

Biden, 80, told the story to describe how his Irish heritage links him to present-day discrimination against Hispanics.

“I’ll tell you a story. I was campaigning for president and I was out in Colorado, and I was with a man whose family had been — he was a former senator, a man whose family had been in the United States since the conquistadores, for generations,” Biden said, apparently referring to former Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.), the current ambassador to Mexico.

“And there were a whole lot of people standing across the refurbished rail station in western, excuse me in eastern Colorado. And there was literally 10,000 people on the other side of the track waiting to hear me speak,” Biden went on.

“And he kept saying, ‘Now Joe, remember, remember these people they are not — these are my people, they are Hispanic. They’re not used to be — you got to show respect.’ And I said, ‘I understand’ and he kept it up. Finally, I turned to him and it’s the God’s truth, this refurbished train station — okay — it had linen kind of wallpaper on it about every 20 feet there was a brass plaque that said, ‘No Irish allowed.’ I said, ‘I get it. I get it.’”

Biden told a different version of the story last year at a Cinco de Mayo event and described a smaller crowd of “a couple of thousand people.”

In that version, he was campaigning as Barack Obama’s vice presidential candidate.

The details of the story appear to match an Oct. 22, 2008, campaign speech outside of the historic Union Depot in Pueblo, a city south of Colorado Springs.

Biden was photographed with Salazar outside the restored train station dating to 1889, which does indeed have reproductions of anti-immigrant signage, though many nationalities in addition to Irish are mentioned.

An archived Obama-Biden campaign blog entry from the time said 1,500 people attended, according to local fire inspector Woody Percival.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the discrepancy, though a person familiar with the campaign stop told The Post that the fire inspector’s crowd estimate sounded more realistic for the Wednesday afternoon speech in a city of just over 100,000 residents.

The Pueblo Union Depot provided The Post with photos of the signed mentioned by Biden.

A reproduced framed notice on a wall of the building says, “All Irish, German, Italian, French, Greek, Polish, Spanish, Mexican, and Jewish passengers must use immigrant waiting room.”

The plaque added in smaller font at the bottom, “*It is a documented historic fact that this form of prejudice and bigotry existed in Pueblo when the Union Depot opened in 1889.”

Another sign says immigrants must use a waiting room behind the baggage area.

The president is about five-eighths Irish, though he acknowledges his surname is English.

Biden has for decades been accused of embellishing his own resume while attempting to bolster his credentials — or to establish a connection to his audiences.

He also is the oldest-ever president and his mental acuity also is a frequent matter of public debate. Biden says he intends to run for a second term. He would be 86 if he completes eight years in office.

Concern about Biden’s mental fitness peaked when he asked “Where’s Jackie?” and searched for the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) in September, despite publicly mourning her death and even calling her family to offer his condolences in August.

In December, Biden claimed that his uncle Frank Biden won the Purple Heart for his actions during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II — but there’s no evidence of the award and key details make the story factually impossible.

In October, Biden said firefighters nearly died extinguishing a blaze in his kitchen in 2004, prompting the local fire department to describe the event as relatively “insignificant” for trained professionals.

In May, Biden said at the Naval Academy’s graduation ceremony that he was appointed to the military school in 1965 by the late Sen. J. Caleb Boggs (R-Del.). A search of Boggs’ archives failed to turn up evidence of the appointment. 

In January 2022, Biden told students at historically black colleges in Atlanta that he was arrested during civil rights protests — for which there is no evidence.

And Biden in September 2021 told Jewish leaders that he remembered “spending time at” and “going to” the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh after the mass murder of 11 people there in 2018. The synagogue said he never visited and the White House later said he was thinking about a 2019 phone call to the synagogue’s rabbi.

Biden also falsely said during the 2020 campaign he “had the great honor of being arrested… trying to get to see [Nelson Mandela] on Robbens [sic] Island.” He later admitted that wasn’t true and said he was thinking of being separated during a congressional trip to Lesotho, though a Democratic colleague on the trip disputed that account as well.

Although his age has sparked questions about his mental acuity — with then-President Donald Trump claiming in 2020 that Biden was mentally “shot” — Biden also has faced criticism for years about imprecise or incorrect claims.

He dropped out of the 1988 Democratic presidential primary after revelations that he exaggerated his academic record and plagiarized a campaign speech and a law school paper.

During that campaign, Biden borrowed British politician Neil Kinnock’s family history — with Biden changing details to incorrectly claim in speeches that “my ancestors… worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours.” Unlike Kinnock, Biden’s ancestors did not mine coal.

Biden also claimed in 1987 that he “graduated with three degrees from college,” was named “the outstanding student in the political science department,” “went to law school on a full academic scholarship — the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship” and ”ended up in the top half” of his class. None of those claims were true.