evidence: When President Joe Biden passingly said in a voting rights speech last week that he had been "arrested" in the context of the civil rights movement – even suggesting this had happened more than once – it was a classic Biden false claim: an anecdote about his past for which there is no evidence, prompted by a decision to ad-lib rather than stick to a prepared text, resulting in easily avoidable questions about his honesty. [...] While talking in November to technical college students standing near a truck, Biden claimed, "I used to drive a tractor-trailer," though only for "part of a summer." This was similar to something he had said at a Mack Trucks facility in July, when he claimed, "I used to drive an 18-wheeler, man," adding, "I got to." There is no evidence Biden ever drove a big truck; the White House previously noted to CNN that he once had a job driving a school bus (which is not an 18-wheeler or a tractor-trailer) and that, as a senator in 1973, he spent a night riding in a cargo truck (not driving it). [...] Biden distracted from his voting rights message with the baseless claim last week, which he had made before, about having been arrested during a civil rights protest; in some of the previous versions of the story, he had merely claimed a police officer had taken him home from a protest. (There is evidence Biden participated in some civil rights activities in his youth but no record of any arrest.)