Trump's Scranton Lie Is His Latest Attack On Joe Biden For Being A Normal Person
President Donald Trump used part of his limited time in the final presidential debate of the 2020 campaign to suggest Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden isn’t really from Scranton, Pennsylvania, even though Biden was born in the city and lived there until he was 10 years old.
It wasn’t just a throwaway lie. It was the latest move in a political strategy to cast doubt on Biden’s public image. And like most other parts of Trump’s effort, it was a dishonest reach that’s unlikely to give the Republican nominee what he wants.
“He doesn’t come from Scranton,” Trump said of his rival during the debate in Nashville, Tennessee. “He lived there for a short period of time, before he even knew it, and he left.”
Biden often describes his childhood in Scranton as one of the most influential periods in his life. He left not because of personal ambition ― Trump has previously said Biden “abandoned Scranton” ― but because his family had to. Biden’s father struggled to find steady work in the city, and the family spent years living with Biden’s maternal grandparents. Ultimately, the elder Biden moved the family to Delaware, where he felt he would be better able to support them. They lived for a while in a small apartment in Claymont and then moved to a house in Wilmington.
A fact-check by the Philadelphia Inquirer recently found that Biden “maintained close personal relationships and professional ties to Scranton in the more than six decades since he left.”
Soon after Trump’s comment, Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) tweeted a photograph of the Scranton Times Tribune calling the former vice president a “native son” on its front page when he accepted the Democratic nomination in August.
Trump’s jab, almost certainly designed with an eye to crucial swing state Pennsylvania, is the latest in a series of attack lines that don’t land. Trump has criticized Biden’s son Hunter Biden, and his allies have mocked their close...
