White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre adopted the “everybody’s doing it defense” when asked to explain President Biden’s latest blunder, mixing up world leaders during a speech.
Jean-Pierre was repeatedly pressed about the latest blunder as it related to appointing a long-dead world leader for the second time within days while retelling a story from 2021.
“As far as the names and what he was trying to say, a lot of people, elected officials — a lot of people can mispronounce sometimes,” she said.
She then rattled off several politicians, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, who publicly mixed up names. She even brought up some of her own blunders, including repeatedly mixing up the names of USA Today reporters sitting at the front of the briefing room.
Mixtape: White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke about multiple officials, including herself, who have botched names. It was her latest defense of President Biden, 81, after he included the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in a story
It came after Biden, 81, at a fundraiser in New York on Wednesday evening, replaced the name of the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl with his talk about the 2021 G7 summit and his claims about a discussion of his own boast that “America is back.” ‘
Kohl died in 2017. Biden had wanted to mention former Chancellor Angela Merkel.
That came days after he confused the late former French president Mitterrand with the current one, Emmanuel Macron, in the story.
She pointed out that Johnson mixed up the names Iran and Israel in an interview.
“I often call Joe from USA Today ‘Michael.’ Now I call him Jo-Jo,” she joked. That’s an inside joke for the name Biden strangely used when invoking Joey Garrison.
President Biden has botched the same story over and over again, but keeps telling it even as he takes flak for the blubs
Sacre blue! Biden accidentally wrote French President Emmanuel Macron, seen with his wife Brigitte Macron, out of the story. During another iteration, he referred to the “President of France”
None of the studies involve deceased story characters.
Biden also infamously asked “Where’s Jackie” in 2022 while speaking at an event a month after Rep. Jackie Walorski was killed in a tragic car accident.
She said Fox News host Sean Hannity mixed up the Republican congressman’s names.
When asked if she had seen Biden mix up names in private, she said no.
Biden’s latest blunder came during a fundraiser.
‘When I was first elected president, I went to a G7 meeting with the seven heads of state in Europe and Britain. I sat down and said, ‘Well, America is back,’ and the President of France looked at me and said, ‘For how long?’ I’ve never thought about it that way,” Biden said.
“Then 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 had broken down the doors of the British Parliament and murdered some of them? on the way in,” Biden said.
In the Mitterrand mix, Biden referred to a leader who died 28 years ago. He served from 1981 to 1995 and died the following year.
Biden served in the Senate for 36 years and has been active in politics for five decades.
Jean-Pierre faced multiple questions about the incident, a signal of how the issue has changed from a blundering patrol only occasionally referenced in the mainstream media to a broader topic raised by his little Democratic primary rival Dean Phillips. It was one of the first questions raised by the Associated Press, which asked about comments about “European leaders who had died at the time.” Still, Jean-Pierre chose not to appeal to outlets tailored to the issue on Thursday.
The press secretary spoke about the content underlying Biden’s story, which concerns January 6 and leaders concerned about chaos in the US, and Biden’s own statement that “America is back.”
But she did not explain why he continues to tell the story even as he repeatedly fails to get the details right, and why he cannot illustrate his democratic ideals in other ways.
She also declined to comment when asked about Biden’s overall health.