Biden mistakes living leaders for deceased ones twice in a week
On Wednesday, 7 February 2024, in the midst of a presidential campaign meeting, Joe Biden erroneously referred to the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, instead of former Chancellor Angela Merkel. The US president recounted a conversation from 2021.
As reported in Sky News, during a fundraiser in New York, Biden spoke about discussions that he conducted with European leaders during the G7 summit in Cornwall in 2021, just a few months after the January riots at the Capitol.
The US president remarked that Helmut Kohl (who passed away in 2017), asked him how he would react if he learned about a riot in the British Parliament and an attack on officers.
It was indeed Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, who was present at the summit.
The aforementioned gaffe transpired merely a few days after Biden mixed up Francois Mitterrand, the late president of France who died in 1978, with the ruling leader Emmanuel Macron.
On Monday, during a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Biden recounted the same anecdote as on Wednesday, describing the reactions of the leaders of France and Germany, during the G7 summit after the events of January 6th.
While recollecting the dialogue with Macron, he initially referred to him as Mitterrand and wrongly stated that he "hails from" Germany. However, he promptly rectified his blunder. Mitterrand presided over France from 1981 to 1995.
