(HorizonPost.com) – At two separate campaign events on Wednesday, President Biden mistakenly referred to the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl while discussing a conversation he had about the January 6 riot with world leaders during the 2021 G7 summit, NBC News reported.
While attending fundraisers in New York City on Wednesday, Biden said when he attended the G7 in Cornwall, England, he told his fellow G7 leaders, “America is back.”
The president recounted that he asked Germany’s Helmut Kohl what he would say if he picked up the London Times and learned that a thousand people stormed the UK Parliament and killed police officers to “stop the election of a prime minister.”
However, Biden could not have had this conversation with Helmut Kohl at the 2021 G7 summit since Helmut Kohl has not been chancellor of Germany since 1998 and has been dead since 2017. The German chancellor who attended the 2021 G7 summit in Cornwall was Angela Merkel.
This was the second time in less than a week that President Biden mixed up his world leaders.
At a campaign event in Las Vegas several days earlier, the president recounted the same conversation at the G7 summit in Cornwall, this time recounting that when he said “America is back,” President François Mitterand “from Germany … I mean from France” replied, “how long are you back for?”
Mitterand died in 1996. It was French President Emmanuel Macron who attended the Cornwall G7 summit with President Biden.
When asked about the president’s multiple “speaking to long-dead world leaders” gaffes during Thursday’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre deflected by stressing how important Biden’s message about the threat to democracy posed by the January 6 riot was.
When she finally got around to addressing Biden’s conversation with dead people, Jean-Pierre said many elected officials “misspeak” at times. She then gave a few examples of Republican lawmakers misspeaking.
While the White House may want to downplay the president’s gaffes, voters may not be convinced.
An NBC News poll from January found that 76 percent of respondents, including half of Democrats, have concerns about the 81-year-old president’s physical and mental health.
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