Joe Biden has appeared to have confused French President Emmanuel Macron with a former leader of France... who’s been dead for nearly three decades.
On Sunday (February 4), the 81-year-old US president held a campaign speech in Las Vegas, Nevada, as part of a two-day stop in the 2024 battleground state ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary.
At the event, which was held at Pearson Community Center, Biden recounted a story about a meeting he had with French President Emmanuel Macron during a G7 summit in England back in 2021 to discuss the January 6 riots.
"I sat down and I said, 'America's back,'" the leader recalled, as cited by The New York Post. "And Mitterrand from Germany - I mean from France - looked at me and said 'You know what — why — how long you back for?'"
The president continued his speech by saying that Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, questioned him on how he and the US would react if, hypothetically, thousands of people stormed Britain’s House of Commons and murdered two "bobbies," or British police officers, to stop the election of a Prime Minister.
"I never thought about it from that perspective," Biden shared, per the publication. "What would we say if that happened in another democracy around the world? Well, the whole world watched — the whole world watched. And what’s going on?"
The White House later published the remarks in the official transcript of the speech, and crossed out the name "Mitterrand" and replaced it with "Macron".
Mitterrand became French president in 1981 and remained in office until 1995. He passed away a year later, aged 79. Meanwhile, Macron was elected in 2017, aged 39, becoming France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon.
This is not the first speaking mistake the oldest sitting US president has made, as he has previously dubbed himself as a "gaffe machine".
Last year, Biden sparked outrage when he called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a "dictator" during a fundraiser in California. This prompted a furious response from Beijing and further straining diplomatic relations between the two nations.
He also made another blunder when he confused the war in Ukraine with the Iraq War, which concluded in 2011. He stated that Russia's leader Vladimir Putin was "clearly losing the war in Iraq".
Furthermore, Biden also bizarrely closed out a speech on gun control with the statement: "God save the Queen, man." The White House later explained the strange reference by saying: "He couldn’t do the full rope line due to weather and was commenting to someone in the crowd," per The Independent.
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