President Biden on Wednesday falsely claimed he toured the wreckage of the “$60 zillion” Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the day after it collapsed, even though he didn’t visit the site until more than a week after the accident.
Speaking at the second of two campaign events in Philadelphia, Mr. Biden talked about his administration’s efforts to rebuild the bridge, which collapsed on March 26, after it was struck by a cargo ship.
“The bridge went down over the Chesapeake and we were there the next day, I was with the governor,” Mr. Biden told the crowd gathered at a restaurant and jazz bar known as South.
However, Mr. Biden didn’t travel to the site until April 5, more than a full week after the incident. At the time, the White House said Mr. Biden had to wait until the area was safe for a visit and until his trip would not interfere with efforts to recover the bodies of the six workers killed in the crash.
Mr. Biden also grossly inflated the cost of the bridge repair, telling the crowd it would take “$60 zillion” to fix the bridge, which is not a real number.
The actual cost of rebuilding the bridge is unclear. The Federal Highway Administration has provided $60 million in “quick release” emergency relief funds to start the repairs. Some estimates price the repairs at least $400 million.
The president has a long history of claiming to have immediately witnessed or visited the sites of catastrophes.
On the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Mr. Biden vividly described the scene from Ground Zero after the World Trade Center collapsed.
“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,” he said. “It looked so devastating.”
But Mr. Biden didn’t visit Ground Zero until Sept. 20 — nine days after the attack — as part of a 38-senator delegation.
In August, he inexplicably claimed he witnessed the collapse of a Pittsburgh bridge, even though it was well-documented that it fell apart hours before he visited the city.
“By the way, Pittsburgh is the city of bridges. More bridges in Pittsburgh than in any other city in America. I watched that bridge collapse. I got there and saw it collapse with over 200 feet off the ground going over a valley. It collapsed,” Mr. Biden said at the time. “Thank God school was out.”
Mr. Biden was referring to the Forbes Avenue Bridge over Fern Hollow Creek, which collapsed in January 2022. The bridge came down at 6:39 a.m., hours before Mr. Biden’s afternoon arrival in the city on the same day.
Upon arriving in Pittsburgh later that day, Mr. Biden stopped at one end of the fallen bridge and met with rescue and construction workers.
But even press reports from that time show that Mr. Biden had a hard time seeing the bridge because of the concrete barriers and yellow police tape blocking views of the crumbled structure. An Associated Press report from that day said Mr. Biden craned his neck to get a look at the disaster area.
• Jeff Mordock can be reached at jmordock@washingtontimes.com.