President Joe Biden confused current European political leaders for their deceased predecessors several times this week as voters grow worried about his mental fitness.
Biden twice referenced former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who passed away in 2017, during campaign events in New York on Wednesday. He told stories about attending a conference in the United Kingdom with European leaders in 2021, during which former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was in office, and claimed to have asked Kohl how he would respond if people stormed the British Parliament to “stop the election of a prime minister."
The blunder came shortly after Biden said at a Sunday event in Nevada that he had asked a similar question of former French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, even as current French President Emmanuel Macron had attended the 2021 conference.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the gaffe earlier this week at a press briefing but immediately said she was “not even going to go down that rabbit hole,” immediately attempting to solicit a question from a different reporter.
Biden also confused current Chinese President Xi Jinping for his predecessor Deng Xiaoping, who died in 1997, during remarks made at the end of last year. Biden chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for three separate periods from 2001 to 2009 and handled various foreign affairs initiatives during the Obama administration.
Voters have indicated in numerous polls that they believe Biden, who is eighty-one years old, is not fit to serve as commander-in-chief. One survey published last fall by the Wall Street Journal found that 73% of voters think Biden is “too old” to run for reelection. Another poll from the Washington Post saw only 32% of respondents concur that Biden has the “mental sharpness” needed to serve, a conclusion shared by 69% of surveyed independents.