President Joe Biden landed in Maui on Monday to visit with victims of one of the worst wildfires in recent years. The wildfire earlier this month killed at least 114 people, reported Sky News, with as many as 850 still missing, according to Richard Bissen, the mayor of Maui County.
Now, Biden is taking flack about a story he told to victims about his own brush with a fire in 2004.
Biden gave a speech at the Lahaina Civic Center in Lahaina, Hawaii, where wildfires ripped through neighborhoods, destroying most of the houses in the town, according to the Honolulu Civil Beat.
“I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, what it’s like to lose a home,” Biden said.
“It was a sunny Sunday, and lightning struck at home on a little lake that’s outside of our home,” Biden said. The lightning hit a wire and “came up underneath our home into the heating ducts—the air conditioning ducts,” Biden said.
“To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my ’67 Corvette, and my cat,” Biden said.
The president immediately came in for criticism online, with the Republican National Committee slamming the video on Twitter.
“According to a 2004 AP report,” they pointed out, “it was ‘a small fire…contained to the kitchen’ that ‘was under control in 20 minutes.’”
According to an Aug. 2, 2004 AP story, “no one was injured in … [the] fire, which started amid a storm…”
“Firefighters arrived to find heavy smoke coming from the house, but were able to keep the flames from spreading beyond the kitchen,” Cranston Heights Fire Company Chief George Lamborn told Associated Press at the time. Biden, in his speech to Hawaii residents, praised the quick response of firefighters then.
“He is the most narcissistic pathological liar,” Twitter user RockPrincess64 said about Biden’s remarks. “He honestly makes me sick to my stomach”
“This clown is disgusting!!” said Twitter user @TLtj18. “Takes 2 weeks to get there then talks about himself.”
Biden faced heavy criticism after reportedly responding on Aug. 13 with “no comment” to a question about the death toll in the fires while he was relaxing by the ocean in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
“When Biden thinks he’s be empathetic he’s really being an assh*le,” Twitter user @RegalEagle11 said. “It’s always about Biden. BTW: His house NEVER burned down to the ground.”
It wasn’t the first time Biden had told the story and been criticized for embellishing the details. Last January he told a similar story while visiting Colorado after a wildfire, reported the Washington Examiner.
“Jill and I have not gone through what you’ve gone through, but we have had lightning strike our home and almost lose our home,” Biden said then.
