US President Joe Biden has suffered another gaffe as he mistakenly referred to Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy as “President Putin” before correcting himself at the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday.
“Now I want to hand it over to the president of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he has determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin,” Biden.
Biden quickly corrected himself, saying, “I’m so focused on beating President Putin, we’ve got to worry about it.”
Biden’s many gaffes
This is not the first time that the 81-year-old president of the US has suffered gaffes raising more questions about his verbal acuity and attentiveness in various public and diplomatic settings.
During a press conference following the publication of a report by Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur on February 8, 2024, which cleared the president of wrongdoing regarding classified Obama-era documents but criticised his memory, President Biden responded with visible anger and determination.
He was particularly upset by personal comments from the Republican prosecutor regarding his mental acuity, especially the assertion that he couldn’t recall the year his son Beau passed away from brain cancer.
However, President Biden’s defense of his mental sharpness was undercut when he appeared to mistake Egypt for Mexico while discussing the Israel-Hamas conflict in the Middle East.
Additionally, in February of the same year, perhaps due to his extensive political career (beginning in the Senate in January 1973), President Biden twice confused current world leaders with their predecessors who had passed away long ago. At a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, he referred to Emmanuel Macron as Francois Mitterand, who died in 1996. Later, in New York, he mentioned discussing the Capitol riot with Helmut Kohl, who had passed away in 2017, mistaking him for Angela Merkel.
In another incident that month, during a press conference at the White House, President Biden stumbled over his words and struggled to recall the name of the terrorist group involved in the conflict with Israel in Gaza.
Further mishaps followed, such as a stumble on the stairs of Air Force One in July 2023 in Helsinki, Finland, after attending a NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. He also confused the ongoing war in Ukraine with the Iraq War during a press briefing on the South Lawn of the White House in June 2023.
In a different incident the same month, President Biden ended a speech on gun control at the National Safer Communities Summit in Connecticut by unexpectedly saying “God save the Queen, man,” leading to confusion and speculation about whom he was referring to.
During a meeting with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the White House in June 2023, President Biden mistakenly addressed him as “Mr. President,” quickly correcting himself to laughter from both leaders.
‘I’m the most qualified person’
Despite the concerns, Biden insisted he would stay in the race despite calls from some in his party to drop out and to allow another figure, including Harris, to run in the November election.
“I’m the most qualified person to run for president. I beat him once, and I will beat him again,” Biden said of Trump, the Republican candidate.
He said he wouldn’t leave the race unless polls showed him that he had no chance of winning against Trump, even if they showed that Harris’s chances in the election were better than his own.
Nonetheless, he said Harris was qualified to be president as well, although he misnamed her in the endorsement. “I wouldn’t have picked vice-president Trump to be vice-president if she’s not qualified to be president,” he said.
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