After fumbling Hamas’s name, Biden mistakes dead leader for living one, again
In series of gaffes, president calls terror group ‘opposition’ before correcting himself, says he met ex-German leader Helmut Kohl 4 years after his death, confuses Egypt, Mexico
US President Joe Biden confused a European leader with a dead predecessor for the second time in a week, telling a campaign event he met Helmut Kohl four years after the German chancellor passed away.
The 81-year-old’s gaffe late Wednesday came a day after he appeared to forget the name of the Hamas terror group while answering questions from reporters on progress in talks for a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.
He also said this week that he had spoken to long-dead French president Francois Mitterrand, instead of current leader Emmanuel Macron, at the same G7 summit in June 2021 where he said he had met Kohl.
On Thursday, he also seemed to confuse Egypt and Mexico, referring to talks with Abdel Fattah al-Sissi on aid entering Gaza as conversations with “the president of Mexico.”
When asked by reporters on Tuesday about the terror group’s response to a potential hostage release deal set last week by Qatari and Egyptian mediators and backed by the United States and Israel, Biden was clearly trying to choose his words carefully — but instead stumbled and said there had been “a response from the opposition,” before correcting himself, “Yes, I’m sorry, from Hamas.”
The US, along with mediators Egypt and Qatar, has continued to push for a hostage release agreement that would be accompanied by a truce in the war in Gaza, sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacres.
On Wednesday, at a New York reception that raised money for his reelection bid, Biden changed a story that is a staple of his stump speech to include Kohl instead of Merkel, who was in power at the time of the reported conversation, 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 that 1,000 people had broken down the doors… of the British Parliament and killed some [people] on the way in [to] deny the prime minister to take office,'” Biden said, according to a pool report.
Angela Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, was the leader attending the summit. Kohl died in 2017 and was chancellor for 16 years from 1982 to 1998, becoming known as the architect of German reunification after the Cold War.
Polls show US voters are increasingly concerned about Biden’s age. He would be 82 at the start of a second term and 86 at the end.
The White House played down the name mix-ups, pointing to the fact that Biden has met many world leaders over a long career as a senator, vice president and finally president.
“Elected officials, many people, they can misspeak sometimes,” US Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing. “This happens. It happens to all of us.”
Biden’s mix-up of dead and living leaders, however, was the second in the space of a few days.
At a campaign event in Las Vegas on Sunday, Biden was talking about French president Macron’s reaction to his 2020 election win over Trump at the summit.
“And Mitterrand from Germany — I mean, from France — looked at me and said, ‘You know, what — why — how long you back for?'” Biden said. A later White House transcript inserted the correct name, Macron, in brackets.
Mitterrand was French president from 1981 to 1995, and died in 1996.
Making matters worse, during a televised speech late Thursday, which Biden used in part to defend his memory, he referred to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sissi as the “president of Mexico.”
The gaffes came as US Special Counsel Robert Hur said in a report on Thursday that he opted against bringing criminal charges against Biden for taking classified documents, citing among mitigating factors the president’s “poor memory.”
US voters seem less worried about the age of 77-year-old Trump, who is running for another White House term — but he has also made several slip-ups.
Trump recently mixed up his rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, with former US House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.
Last year, he said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was the leader of Turkey and warned that the US was on the verge of “World War II,” which ended in 1945.
