President Joe Biden named North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un the president of South Korea during a behind-closed-doors fundraiser in San Francisco on Friday.
Biden, 81, went after his 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, for praising the North Korean leader after they met a handful of times during the Republican administration.
The president spoke of Trump’s pride in “love letters from South Korean President Kim Jong Un.”
South Korea’s president is Yoon Suk Yeol, who has met Biden a number of times — including at a state dinner at the White House, an official trip to South Korea and a summit at Camp David — since Yoon was elected in 2022.
Since being sworn in, Biden has worked carefully to cultivate relationships with the leaders of South Korea and Japan to counter the rise of China.
President Joe Biden (right) walks with Rep. Anna Eschoo (right) ahead of a fundraiser Friday in San Francisco. During the camera-free campaign event, Biden accidentally said Kim Jong Un was the leader of South Korea
81-year-old Biden (left) has met South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol (right) a number of times, including at a state dinner at the White House in April 2023. Yoon performed a rendition of Don McClean’s American Pie during the glitzy meeting at the White House
The flu comes a week after the president called Japan “xenophobic” at another private event with donors.
At a fundraiser at D.C.’s glitzy Mayflower Hotel to mark the start of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, the president talked about why he believed the U.S. economy was stronger than those of several Asian countries.
Biden tried to slam former President Donald Trump for talking about the ‘love letters’ he exchanged with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un (pictured)
‘Why is China stagnating so much economically? Why does Japan have problems? Why is Russia? Why is India? Because they are xenophobic,” Biden said. “They don’t want immigrants,” the president surmised.
In the wake of the “xenophobic” comment, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre never said whether the president meant what he said.
“I think the broader, broader, broader case that he was trying to make, and that I think most, most leaders and allies around the world understand, is that he tried to – he said that if it goes to, when it comes to When it comes to who we are as a nation, we are a nation of immigrants, that’s in our DNA,” she responded when asked whether the slight was intentional — and whether Biden intended to to apologize.
When Biden has made blunders in the past, Jean-Pierre noted how common it is for people to make slips of the tongue.
However, voters have remained skeptical that Biden – the country’s oldest president – will face a second term.
The Biden campaign has tried to fight fire with fire, highlighting it online when Trump makes a blunder or stumbles.
President Kim Jong Un’s whoops come while the North Korean dictator was already in the news — due to claims in Governor Kristi Noem’s book that the two met in person.
Noem, who was already embroiled in a dog killing scandal, also came under fire when she said she met Kim in person while serving in Congress in the pages of the new book.
Since then, her spokesperson told DailyMail.com that the passage is coming true and placing the blame on a ‘ghostwriter’.
“It has been brought to our attention that the forthcoming book ‘No Going Back’ contains two minor errors,” spokesman Ian Fury said. “This has been passed on to the ghostwriter and editor.”
“Kim Jong Un was on a list of world leaders and shouldn’t have been,” Fury said.
Noem has also had a series of awkward interviews, in which she refused to say how the anecdote about meeting Kim appeared in the book.