President Joe Biden has again claimed he spoke to a dead dignitary at the 2021 G7 summit – marking the second time in a week the president has appeared to reference a meeting with a dead leader.
The 81-year-old president told an anecdote in Las Vegas on Monday about attending the June 2021 summit in England, where he referred to a conversation with French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, instead of current leader Emmanuel Macron.
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 the anecdote to other leaders at the summit, that “America is back” and the president of France – whom Biden did not mention by name this time – responded: “For how long?”
Biden said he had “never thought about it that way,” before claiming to have been addressed by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl about the nature of the January 6 uprising.
Kohl died in 2017 and did not attend the 2021 summit.
President Joe Biden twice described a meeting at the 2021 G7 summit with ex-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, the second time the president appears 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 picked up the London Times tomorrow morning and learned that a thousand people broke down the doors of the British Parliament and some (inaudible) killed when they entered? to prevent the next Prime Minister from taking office. And then 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 talked about a similar meeting, mentioned Macron and then told the same story about Kohl’s hypothesis.
Biden’s confusion is just the latest blunder for the famously folksy president, who stuttered as a child and called himself a “gaffe machine.”
Like Merkel, he knows Macron, elected in 2017 at the age of 39, well: 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 were any 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.
Biden met Mitterrand as chairman of the European Affairs Committee in January 1988 while discussing a Soviet nuclear weapons treaty.
Biden, seen here walking with German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the G7 summit on June 11, 2021. In an anecdote he told donors twice in New York on Wednesday, he said the then-chancellor was Helmut Kohl.
Kohl died on June 16, 2017 and has 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 about 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 the president has made since taking office.
The 81-year-old has repeatedly said that his son Beau died in Iraq, rather than at Walter Reed, clouding the ongoing war in Ukraine in June 2023 for the Iraq war, which ended in 2011.
He declared that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was “clearly losing the war in Iraq.”
That same month, he concluded 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, saying it amounted to: “Over a billion, 300 million, trillion, 300 million dollars.”
Biden has also spoken out about Donald Trump’s blunders — noting that Trump refers to “starting World War II,” which is already over, and confuses Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi.
“He’s a little confused these days,” Biden said.
Biden’s confusion is just the latest blunder for the famously folksy president. He has said repeatedly that his son Beau died in Iraq, rather than at Walter Reed
Biden has previously said he was confusing the war in Ukraine with the war in Iraq and declared that Vladimir Putin was “clearly losing the war in Iraq.”
About 49 percent of Democrats admit Joe Biden is too old to be president in our poll of likely 2024 voters from last year. Only 28 percent think he is exactly the right age
The White House on Tuesday declined to be drawn into questions about President Biden’s suitability for the job.
A reporter pointed out Biden’s blunder on Monday, confusing French leaders during the daily White House briefing a day later, when he asked press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre how the president would appeal to about three-quarters of the population who was concerned about his physical and mental health.
“I’m not even going down that rabbit hole with you, sir,” was her curt response.
When the reporter countered that it wasn’t a rabbit hole, she expanded her answer to list Biden’s busy recent 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 at that.’
The episode only served to highlight Biden’s increasing age. At the age of 81, he is already the oldest president in history, and he is running for another term that would keep him in office until he is 86.
A DailyMail.com poll last year found that 70 percent of voters thought Biden was too old to be president. That included more than half of Democrats, demonstrating the challenge he faces as he campaigns for a second term.