Joe Biden, 81, spoke on Wednesday evening, during a campaign event, of a conversation he would have had in 2021 with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017.
• Read also: Joe Biden confuses Emmanuel Macron and François Mitterrand, who died in 1996
This is the second time in a few days that he has made a mix-up involving a deceased foreign leader, after having already mentioned on Sunday an exchange, supposedly in 2021, with former French President François Mitterrand.
His spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre, without directly saying that the president was wrong, cited other examples of American personalities having thus confused names, including herself.
“Many people, elected officials (…) can make mistakes a few times,” she said Thursday during her routine press briefing, “it happens.”
The American president, who participated in a fundraising meeting in New York, spoke of a G7 summit in June 2021 in the United Kingdom, a few months after his inauguration, and after the assault on the Capitol by supporters of the former President Donald Trump.
“Helmut Kohl, the German, looked at me and said, ‘What would you say, Mr. President, if tomorrow you opened the British Times to read that 1,000 people had broken into the British parliament and killed people, with the intention of preventing the Prime Minister from taking office?” declared Joe Biden, according to comments transcribed by the journalists accompanying him.
This type of meeting is not filmed or recorded, but the press can take notes.
Helmut Kohl, German chancellor between 1982 and 1998, died in 2017. Germany was represented at this summit by Angela Merkel.
In a speech on Friday in Las Vegas, Joe Biden had already mentioned this G7 meeting, and this time referring to former French President François Mitterrand, who died almost thirty years ago, and not his current counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who there participated.
The American president very often refers to this international summit during which, according to him, international leaders expressed their concern for American democracy.
Joe Biden’s age, accustomed to gaffes or rambling remarks, is a major concern among voters, according to polls.
Opinion surveys reveal that this is less the case for Donald Trump, aged 77 and also a presidential candidate in November.
But the former Republican president also has his moments of confusion. In January, in a speech, he confused his rival for the Republican nomination Nikki Haley with the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
