For the second time in a week, US President Joe Biden mistook a European leader with a deceased predecessor, saying at a campaign event that he met Helmut Kohl four years after the German chancellor died.
The 81-year-old’s mistake late Wednesday occurred just days after he claimed to have spoken with long-dead French president Francois Mitterand, rather than current leader Emmanuel Macron, at the same G7 conference in June 2021 that he claimed to have met Kohl.
Biden, who is running for reelection in November, frequently uses the same tale about the gathering in the United Kingdom to demonstrate what he claims were global fears about the January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by followers of former President Trump.
“Helmut Kohl of Germany looked at me and said, ‘what would you say Mr President, if you picked up the London Times tomorrow morning and learned that 1,000 people had broken down the doors… of the British Parliament and killed some (people) on the way in (to) deny the prime minister to take office,'” said Vice President Biden, according to a pool report.
Germany’s first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, attended the meeting. Kohl died in 2017, having served as chancellor for 16 years, from 1982 to 1998, and became known as the architect of German reunification during the Cold War.
This is the second mix-up in a few days.
At a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Sunday, Biden discussed French President Macron’s reaction to his 2020 election victory over Trump at the summit.
“And Mitterrand from Germany — I mean, from France — looked at me and said, ‘You know, what — why — how long you back for?'” Biden stated. A later White House transcript included the right name, Macron, in brackets.
Mitterrand, the French president from 1981 to 1995, died in 1996.
Polls reveal that US voters are increasingly concerned about Biden’s age. He’d be 82 at the start of his second term and 86 at the end.
Voters are less concerned with Trump’s age, 77, as he seeks another term in the White House, although he has made a number of mistakes.
He recently confused his Republican primary opponent, Nikki Haley, with former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Last year, he claimed that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was Turkey’s leader and warned that the US was on the eve of “World War II,” which concluded in 1945.