US President Joe Biden confused his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron and his predecessor François Mitterrand, who died almost 30 years ago, in a campaign speech shared on social networks.
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Mr. Biden, 81, speaking in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Sunday, described his French counterpart's reaction at a 2020 G7 meeting.
Not only does he understand the leader's name, but he also assigns him the wrong nationality before correcting himself.
“I said: America is back,” Joe Biden says in a video. “Mitterrand from Germany – I mean, from France – looked at me and said: Do you know what, why, how long have you been back?,” he adds.
The White House later released a transcript of his speech and clarified that the president was referring to French leader Emmanuel Macron.
The video, in which we see Mr. Biden hesitating and fumbling for words, has been viewed and shared thousands of times on X (formerly Twitter).
François Mitterrand ruled France from 1981 to 1995 and died in 1996. Emmanuel Macron has been president since 2017.
The Democratic president's age is often portrayed by his opponents as an obstacle to his re-election.
Mr. Biden has made embarrassing gaffes like this in the past, including in September 2022 when he called a deceased lawmaker during a conference.
“Jackie, are you here? Where's Jackie? I thought she was there,” he said, referring to Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana, who died a month earlier.
But his great rival on the Republican side, former President Donald Trump, 77, has not escaped moments of confusion.
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In January, he mentioned his rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, instead of former House Speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Trump therefore claimed that Nikki Haley was in charge of security at the Capitol during the violent attack on that institution by his supporters on January 6, 2021.
A mistake that led Ms. Haley to question Mr. Trump's mental ability to return to the White House.
Mr Biden also did not fail to respond to Mr Trump's gaffe. “I don't agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we totally agree on this: She's not Nancy Pelosi,” he quipped.