- This week, Biden repeatedly referred to recent conversations with deceased leaders
- On Monday, he referenced former French President Francois Mitterrand instead of Emanuel Macron
- On Wednesday, he twice referred to former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl while recalling a meeting with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel
- Biden has a history of struggling to remember who is alive and who is deceased
President Joe Biden continues referring to recent conversations with deceased foreign leaders as he struggles to recall the exact details of previous meetings.
At New York City fundraisers Wednesday, Biden twice recalled a conversation with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl about the January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, at the G7 summit in 2021.
‘Helmut Kohl of Germany looked at me and said, ‘What would you say Mr. President if you picked up the London Times tomorrow morning and learned there’s 1000 broken down the doors of the British parliament, killed some [inaudible] on the way in to deny the next prime minister to take office. And you think, what would we think?’ Biden claimed at one event.
Kohl died in 2017.
Biden has a history of struggling to remember who is alive and who is deceased
The White House on Thursday defended Biden’s recent mistakes, noting that political figures often make mistakes while speaking publicly.
‘As it relates to the names and what he was trying to say, many people, elected officials – many people they can misspeak sometimes,’ White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during the White House press briefing after reporters repeatedly asked about the mistakes.
Speaking in Las Vegas on Monday, Biden recalled the same summit meeting, referring to a conversation he with French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, instead of the current leader Emmanuel Macron.
Biden’s mistakes are notable, as he frequently refers to these two conversations with European leaders on the fundraising circuit with Democratic donors.
He warns that European leaders are worried about the threat that former President Donald Trump poses to the future of global democracy.
The White House on Tuesday refused to engage with questions about the president’s mental fitness.
A reporter singled out Biden’s Monday gaffe mixing up the French leaders during the White House daily briefing on Tuesday, but Jean-Pierre shot down the question.
‘I’m not even going to go down that rabbit hole with you, sir,’ she replied to Fox News’ Peter Doocy. When he objected that it wasn’t a rabbit hole, she listed Biden’s busy recent itinerary.
‘You saw the president in Vegas, in California,’ she said. ‘You’ve seen the president in South Carolina. You saw him in Michigan. I’ll just leave it there.’
Biden’s evident confusion sparked some light ribbing from Late Night Host Stephen Colbert on Tuesday.
‘I’m telling you. It’s a feature, not a bug. It’s all summed up in his new campaign slogan, Biden 2024: I see dead people!’ he joked.
The president’s struggles only remind voters about Biden’s increasing age. At 81 he is already the oldest president in history, and he is running for another term that would keep him in office until the age of 86.
It’s not the only time Biden has confused the names of world leaders.
In 2019, he briefly referred to a conversation about America under the leadership of former President Donald Trump with former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, when he meant to refer to then-Prime Minister Theresa May.
‘Margaret Thatcher – um, excuse me, Margaret Thatcher, Freudian slip,’ Biden said in 2019, realizing the mistake and correcting himself. ‘But I knew her too.’
During a November 2022 speech, Biden recalled a conversation with a man who ‘invented’ insulin, even though the man who discovered the drug died in 1941, a year before Biden was born.
In September 2022, Biden gave a shoutout to deceased Indiana Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski, R-Ind., who died in a car crash in August 2022.
‘Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?’ Biden said, scanning a crowd of lawmakers at a conference on hunger. ‘She must not be here.’
The White House dismissed the incident by noting that the congresswoman was just ‘top of mind’ for the president.
‘I mean I think many people can speak to sometimes when you have people top of mind, they are top of mind,’ Jean-Pierre said to reporters at the time.
It the latest in a growing list of mistakes by the president since he took office.
The 81-year-old has repeatedly said that his son Beau died in Iraq, instead of at Walter Reed, and in June 2023 muddled up the ongoing war in Ukraine for the Iraq War, which ended in 2011.
He declared that Russian Vladimir Putin was ‘clearly losing the war in Iraq.’
In 2023, he closed out a speech on gun control with the bizarre proclamation: ‘God save the Queen, man’ even after Queen Elizabeth II had died in September 2022.
The following month, Biden claimed to have reached a medical milestone, declaring: ‘We ended cancer as we know it.’
And in December 2023, he bragged about infrastructure spending, saying it was at: ‘Over a billion, 300 million, trillion, 300 million dollars.’
Biden’s missteps only add to the concerns American voters have about the president’s mental and physical abilities as he runs for reelection.
According to a recent NBC poll, a total of 76 percent of voters have either major or moderate concerns about Biden, 81, having the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term.
Sixty-two percent of voters in the poll say they have ‘major concerns’ about Biden’s mental and physical health.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
