More and more American voters are concerned about the age of President Joe Biden. In the past week, he has twice confused dead heads of state with living ones. Photo: Evan Vucci / AP / NTB
American voters are becoming increasingly concerned about the age of Joe Biden (81). This week he has confused dead heads of state with living ones twice.
Thursday 8 February at 22:12
Biden was on Wednesday at an election meeting in New York. There he told about a conversation he had had with “Germany’s Helmut Kohl” at the G7 meeting in 2021. The only problem was that in 2021 Kohl had already been dead for four years.
Kohl was Germany’s Prime Minister from 1982 to 1998 and passed away in 2017, aged 87.
The meeting Biden was referring to was at the G7 meeting in Cornwall in 2021, and the person he was actually referring to was the then leader of Germany, Angela Merkel.
It is the second time in less than a week that Biden has confused a dead head of state with a living one.
Recently “met” the president who died in 1996
A few days before, Biden attended an election rally in Las Vegas. He was supposed to tell about how French President Emmanuel Macron reacted when Biden won over Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
– And Mitterrand from Germany – I mean, from France – looked at me and said “You know, what, why, how long are you back?”, said Biden.
If Joe Biden is re-elected as president this autumn, he will be 86 years old when he ends his second term in the White House. Photo: Andrew Harnik / AP / NTB
In a transcribed version of the speech from the White House, the name was later corrected to Macron. Biden had instead mentioned François Mitterrand, who was president of France from 1981 to 1995. Mitterrand already died in 1996, aged 79.
– That’s what happens
American voters are increasingly worried about Biden’s age, according to polls. If Biden is in office for a second term after this autumn’s presidential election, he will be 82 years old at the start of the new term – and 86 years old when he retires in 2028.
Also read: Joe Biden is not being prosecuted in the document case
The White House has played down Biden’s naming blunders and pointed out that Biden has met countless world leaders during a long career as a senator, vice president and now as president.
– Elected officials and many other people, they can sometimes be wrong, says Biden’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
– That’s what happens. It happens to all of us, she says.
Trump is buzzing too
American voters seem less concerned about the age of 77-year-old Trump, who is running for a second term as president.
Donald Trump (77) has also mixed up heads of state and confused facts in speeches. Photo: Matt Rourke / AP / NTB
But he too has confusion on his conscience.
Recently, he lumped together Nikki Haley, his last remaining contender for the Republican presidential nomination, with former House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
Last year he said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was a leader in Turkey, and warned that the US was on the brink of World War II, which reportedly ended in 1945.
2024-02-08 20:55:48
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