It’s getting hard to watch, folks. Something has to give.
Because the White House is scrambling after Biden suffers another mental episode.
For the third time this week, President Biden informed an audience that he addressed the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol with European leaders who were already deceased at the time.
On Wednesday, Biden told Democratic donors in New York that he discussed the incident with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose death occurred about half a decade before the event.
The astonishing error comes just days after the 81-year-old president mistook French President Emmanuel Macron for the country’s former leader Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996.
Another slip at Biden’s fundraisers tonight- via pool
“… at the 2nd and 3rd events today POTUS seemed to say that Helmut Kohl (who died in 2017) was there with him at his first foreign trip as President talking about Jan 6th…Angela Merkel was the German chancellor in 2021.”
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) February 8, 2024
Biden made the error Wednesday in front of two separate fundraisers, telling contributors about his first international trip as president, to the 2021 G-7 conference in Great Britain, following his 2020 election victory over former President Donald Trump.
“I showed up … and I sat down and said, ‘America’s back,’ and [French President Emmanuel] Macron looked at me and said, ‘For how long?’ How long? Not a joke,” Biden said, according to a pool report of the president’s visit to the house of Maureen White, whose husband Steven Rattner oversees billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s fortune.
“Helmut Kohl said, ‘Joe, what would you think if you picked up the phone and picked up the paper tomorrow and learned in the London Times, on the front page, that 1,000 people stormed the Parliament, broke down the doors of the House of Commons and killed 2 bobbies in the process … trying to stop the election of a prime minister?’” he added.
Kohl, Germany’s chancellor from 1982 to 1998, died in 2017, roughly four years before the 2021 G7 conference.
Angela Merkel was Germany’s chancellor during the meeting of world leaders to which Biden spoke.
The gaffe was witnessed by over 50 people, including actor Robert De Niro.
Biden also mentioned “Helmut Kohl of Germany” while recounting a nearly identical story at an event hosted by Dr. Ramon Tallaj, chairman of the nonprofit SOMOS Community Care and a member of Mayor Eric Adams’ COVID-19 recovery task force, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel near Columbus Circle.
On Sunday in Las Vegas, the president stumbled through the same scenario, with the only difference being that he remembered Mitterrand presenting him with the hypothetical, not Kohl.
“It was in the south of England. And I sat down and I said, ‘America is back,’ and Mitterrand from Germany, I mean from France, looked at me and said – said, ‘you know what — why — how long you back for?’” Biden remarked during his campaign speech.
Mitterrand was president for two terms, from 1981 to 1995. He died on January 8, 1996, at the age of 79.
Biden’s newest error is one of several verbal blunders he’s made since taking office, raising questions about his mental acuity as he seeks a second term.
In one of his most notorious speech gaffes, Biden sought out Indiana Rep. Jackie Walorski at a White House event held eight weeks after her high-profile death.
“Representative Jackie — are you here? Where’s Jackie?” the president asked from the podium during the October 2022 function. “I think she was going to be here.”
The blunder occurred after Biden had already issued a lengthy statement grieving Walorski’s passing.
If re-elected, Biden, who is already the oldest president in US history, will be 86 by the end of his second term.
Stay tuned to The Federalist Wire.
