Pittsburgh Synagogue challenges Biden’s claim that he visited after massacre

Biden says he visited Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue after anti-Semitic massacre. The synagogue says he never came.

By Philip Caldwell, Washington Free Beacon

A Pittsburgh synagogue that was the site of the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history disputed President Joe Biden’s claim that he visited after the massacre.

In October 2018, a gunman killed 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. At a virtual event Thursday with Jewish leaders, Biden said he spent time at the synagogue after the attack.

“I remember spending time at the, you know, going to the, you know, the Tree of Life synagogue, speaking with them,” Biden said.

But the synagogue told the New York Post that Biden never paid a visit. Tree of Life’s executive director, Barb Feige, said Biden has not visited in the three years since the massacre.

A number of political leaders visited the synagogue after the anti-Semitic attack, including then-president Donald Trump, then-Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf (D.).

Biden has given false accounts and anecdotes before. On the campaign trail in 2019, he said he traveled to Afghanistan to award a medal to a war hero, but nearly every detail of the story was false.

“In the space of three minutes, Biden got the time period, the location, the heroic act, the type of medal, the military branch and the rank of the recipient wrong, as well as his own role in the ceremony,” the Washington Post wrote of Biden’s account.

Biden has repeatedly told a story about his interactions with an Amtrak conductor while he was vice president. But that story cannot possibly be true: The conductor in question retired from Amtrak in 1993 and died a year before the incident Biden recounted.