Reporter calls out Biden’s frequent misstatements at White House briefing

White House National Security Council John Kirby dodged a question about President Biden’s frequent factual embellishments after the commander-in-chief falsely claimed this week to have been at Ground Zero the day after the 9/11 attacks. 

“The president has lied about being at Ground Zero the day after the Sept. 11 attacks, falsely claimed he saw the Pittsburgh bridge collapse, claimed his grandfather died in the hospital days before his birth. What is going on with the president? Is he just believing things that didn’t happen did happen, or is he just randomly making stuff up?” Washington Times reporter Jeff Mordock pointedly asked Kirby in a jaw-dropping moment during Wednesday’s White House press briefing. 

Kirby, a retired Navy rear admiral and veteran military public affairs officer, sidestepped the question, highlighting Biden’s Monday trip to visit troops in Alaska and clarifying the 80-year-old president’s Ground Zero gaffe.  

“The president was deeply touched and honored to be able to spend 9/11 with military members there in Alaska and some families and was honored by their presence and the chance to make an important set of remarks about why we need to continue to remember that day. And he did that,”  Kirby, 60, said.

“And he spoke about a visit to Ground Zero, which he did participate in about a week or so after the event, and what that looked and what that smelled and what that felt like. And it had a visceral impact on him as it did so many other Americans on that terrible day.” 

Biden, 80, vividly described the scene from Ground Zero one day after the collapse of the World Trade Center in remarks to military service members in Anchorage, Alaska, on the 22nd anniversary of the terrorist attacks.

“Ground Zero in New York — I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building. And I felt like I was looking through the gates of hell,” Biden said. 

“It looked so devastating because the way you could, from where you could stand,” he added. 

A White House official told The Post on Monday that Biden was thinking about his Sept. 20, 2001,  Ground Zero visit, as part of a 38-senator delegation nine days after the attack.

Kirby added that the president is “focused on making sure that an attack like that never happens again.” 

Unsatisfied with the White House official’s response, Mordock noted that Biden has “had a string of saying things that happened didn’t, things that are easily debunked. Why does he keep doing that?”

“The president was grateful to spend that time with those family members and those troops,” Kirby responded.