President Joe Biden has once again claimed that he spoke to a dead dignitary at the 2021 G7 summit – marking the second time in a week that the president has apparently referenced a meeting with a deceased leader.
The 81-year-old president told an anecdote in Las Vegas on Monday about attending the summit in England in June 2021, in which he referred to the fact that he spoke to French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, and not to current head of state Emmanuel Macron have.
On Wednesday, Biden told a similar anecdote about the summit at two fundraisers in New York. according to a pool report. He discussed, as he did on Monday, when he told other leaders at the summit the anecdote that “America is back” and that the president of France – whom Biden did not mention by name this time – replied: “For how long ?”
Biden said he “never thought about it like that” and then claimed to have been approached by Chancellor Helmut Kohl about the nature of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Kohl died in 2017 and did not attend the summit in 2021.
President Joe Biden twice described a meeting with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, at the 2021 G7 summit, the second time the president appeared to reference a meeting with a deceased leader this week
“Helmut Kohl from Germany looked at me and said: 'What would you say, Mr President, if you opened the Times of London tomorrow morning and found out that 1,000 people had broken down the doors of the British Parliament and killed some?' [inaudible] on the way to deny the next prime minister the opportunity to take office. And you think, what would we think? Biden claimed.
Biden did meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G7 summit, but Kohl died on June 16, 2017 and has not been chancellor since 1998.
At the other fundraiser in New York, he recounted a similar meeting, mentioned Macron, and then told the same story about Kohl's hypothesis.
Biden's confusion is just the latest faux pas for the famously folksy president, who stuttered as a child and described himself as a “panic machine.”
Like Merkel, he knows Macron well, elected in 2017 at the age of 39: Macron is the youngest president in French history and the youngest French head of state since Napoleon.
Biden also met Mitterrand as a young senator. It is unclear whether there are meetings between Biden and Kohl, who was chancellor from 1982 to 1998.
Mitterrand took office in 1981, when the current French president was three years old.
As chairman of the European Affairs Committee, Biden met with Mitterrand in January 1988 while discussing a Soviet nuclear weapons treaty.
Biden, seen here at the G7 summit on June 11, 2021 with Chancellor Angela Merkel. In an anecdote he told donors twice in New York on Wednesday, he said the chancellor at the time was Helmut Kohl
Kohl died on June 16, 2017 and had not been Chancellor since 1998
Earlier this week, Biden appeared to confuse current French President Emmanuel Macron with his predecessor, Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996
While telling an anecdote from the G7 summit in June 2021, Biden confused French President Francois Mitterrand (pictured), who died in 1996, with the current French president
Mitterrand was president until 1995 and died a year later at the age of 79.
It's the latest in a growing list of mistakes by the president since he took office.
The 81-year-old has repeatedly said that his son Beau died in Iraq and not at Walter Reed, mistaking the ongoing war in Ukraine in June 2023 for the Iraq War that ended in 2011.
He declared that Russia's Vladimir Putin had “clearly lost the war in Iraq.”
That same month, he ended a speech on gun control with the bizarre proclamation: “God save the queen, man.”
Queen Elizabeth II had died in September 2022, so some thought he meant Queen Camilla, but the relevance was unclear.
The following month, Biden claimed to have reached a medical milestone, declaring, “We have ended cancer as we know it.”
And in December 2023, he bragged about infrastructure spending: “Over a billion, $300 million, trillion, $300 million.”
Biden has also spoken out about Donald Trump's gaffe, pointing out that Trump is referring to the “outbreak of World War II” that is already over, confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi.
“He’s a little confused these days,” Biden said.
Biden's confusion is just the latest faux pas for the famously folksy president. He has repeatedly said that his son Beau died in Iraq and not at Walter Reed
Biden had previously said he confused the war in Ukraine with the Iraq War and said Vladimir Putin “clearly lost the war in Iraq.”
About 49 percent of Democrats in our last year's survey of likely 2024 voters admit that Joe Biden is too old to be president. Only 28 percent believe he is exactly the right age
The White House on Tuesday refused to respond to questions about President Biden's suitability for the post.
A reporter pointed out that Biden's gaffe on Monday confused French leaders at the daily White House press briefing a day later when he asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre how the president was dealing with around three-quarters of the population would worry about his physical and mental health.
“I won’t even go down that rabbit hole with you, sir,” was her short reply.
When the reporter objected that it wasn't a rabbit hole, she expanded on her answer to list Biden's current itinerary.
“You saw the president in Vegas, in California,” she said. “You saw the president in South Carolina.” You saw him in Michigan. I'll just leave it there.'
The episode only served to highlight Biden's advancing age. At 81, he is already the oldest president in history and is running for another term that would keep him in office until he is 86.
A poll last year found that 70 percent of voters believed Biden was too old to be president. That included more than half of Democrats, showing the challenge he faces as he fights for a second term.