From the “gaffe machine” to suspicions of senility: a mandate of blunders and confusions for Joe Biden

François Mitterrand instead of Emmanuel Macron, Helmut Kohl rather than Angela Merkel... No stranger to blunders in public, American President Joe Biden has made a string of more worrying confusions in recent days. The head of state, who will seek a second term in November at the age of 81, was keen to organize a press conference at the White House on the evening of Thursday, February 8, in order to refute the allegations about the deterioration of his mental faculties. He only made the situation worse, referring to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as “the president of Mexico.”

Joe Biden's career is peppered with blunders and blunders. Already in 2008, during a meeting, Barack Obama's future running mate asked Senator Chuck Graham to stand up even though he was in a wheelchair. The previous year, he had described the future president as “the first mainstream African-American (...) eloquent, brilliant, clean and handsome.” In 2010, he mourned the death of the Irish Prime Minister's mother, while she was still alive. The past blunders of the man who nicknamed himself the “blunder machine” sometimes made us smile. But since the start of his mandate, his sometimes lunar statements have worried and raised questions about his state of mental health.

Also read: The keys to understanding whether Joe Biden is fit to govern

Joe Biden is not yet president, but he is getting ready to be. On the first day of the American election, November 3, 2020, the Democratic candidate gave a speech to his supporters in Philadelphia. While his opponent Donald Trump regularly expressed his suspicions of senility during the campaign, Joe Biden introduced the crowd to his son Beau, “whom many of you helped elect to the Delaware Senate.” Problem: the future president's eldest son died in 2015. Joe Biden then goes on to confuse two of his granddaughters.

Elected for less than a year and a half, Joe Biden must deal with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. At the start of the war, the United States was an unconditional supporter of kyiv, providing it with weapons and financial aid. But during his annual State of the Union address on March 1, 2022, the 46th President of the United States confused the Ukrainian people... and the Iranian people. “Putin can surround kyiv with tanks, but he will never win the hearts and souls of the Iranian people,” he claims. Behind him, his vice-president Kamala Harris whispers to him.

During a speech on abortion, delivered in July 2022 at the White House, Joe Biden “sticked” a little too much to the text of his teleprompter, reading an incise concerning the substance rather than the form. At one point in this speech immortalized by the cameras, we hear the American president pronounce out loud the instruction "repeat the line" before continuing by repeating, in fact, a quote spoken for a few seconds earlier. His teams tried, after the fact, to bury this new blunder, but without convincing.

While traveling in Saudi Arabia on July 16, 2022, Joe Biden exchanged two words that seem very difficult to confuse in French. But they are almost “twins” in English: selfishness and selflessness. The American president therefore honored “the bravery and selfishness of Americans who served in the region”, instead of “altruism”. This slip of the tongue slightly tensed the audience.

During a speech dedicated to the fight against obesity and food insecurity, Joe Biden spoke to a Republican parliamentarian... who died. “I want to thank everyone who is here,” declared Joe Biden, mentioning two parliamentarians particularly involved in these subjects. And added: “Where’s Jackie?” He then seemed to look into the room for former member of the House of Representatives Jackie Walorski, a Republican elected official from Indiana who died in early August in a car accident, who was very involved in the fight against malnutrition.

Here again, the nuance is weak in English. During a trip to Cambodia in the fall of 2022, Joe Biden wanted to “thank the Prime Minister for Colombia’s leadership of the President of Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations)”. He was actually standing next to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. The South American country of Colombia appears to be on the US president's mind as he made the same mistake while leaving the White House for his long trip to Asia. He told reporters that he was “heading to Colombia” (“Colombia” in English Editor’s note), before quickly correcting himself to say “I mean, Cambodia” (“Cambodia”).

Some people can justify this lunar sequence by the time difference. However, it remains one of the most incomprehensible outbursts of the Democratic president. Traveling to Vietnam, on September 12, 2023, Joe Biden stood out during a press conference where he continued the confusion. “It’s evening, isn’t it?” he asked at the start of his speech. Before mentioning global warming by launching into a risky comparison with a John Wayne film. “There’s a movie about John Wayne. He's an Indian scout. And they're trying to bring the... I think it was the Apaches... One of the great tribes of America onto the reservation (...) And the Indian scout... The Indian looks at John Wayne, points to the Union soldier and says, 'He's a lying dog-faced pony soldier,'" Joe Biden sputters. And added: “Well, there are a lot of lying dog-faced pony soldiers about global warming.”

Joe Biden had already mentioned this reference in 2020, when he responded to a student during an election rally. However, it is not clear, even for the most informed film buff. In The Heroic Charge, by the great American director John Ford, a voice-over mentions “dog-headed soldiers”, but there is no mention of “liar” or “pony”.

During this same press conference, the American president described Vietnam as a... “third world” country. A comment which required the intervention of White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre. Which cut off Joe Biden's microphone, distraught in the face of the many questions, and concluded the press conference. Almost lost, he left his desk with this more than mysterious sentence: "I don't know what it is for you, but I'm going to go to bed..."

In November 2023, during a Thanksgiving event at the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia, Joe Biden also got the age of a little girl wrong, causing general unease in the audience. Towards the end of his speech, the US president spoke to a little girl who appeared to be wearing stuffed cat ears as a headband. “I like your ears, I like them, they’re really cool. What is your name?” he asked. The little girl, hesitant, lowers her eyes shyly as she responds: “Catherine.” “What a lovely name. That’s my mom’s name… How old are you? Seventeen years ?",

then asks the president.

A little boy nearby answers for her, saying she's 6. Fake-surprised, Biden continues, "Six years old?", before directing his attention to the boy, teasing him by asking if he was- even 15, to which the child declares having “four”. "Four years? You're a pretty big guy. Well, I'll tell you what, be nice to your sister. You'll need her one day."

The latest confusion has caused a lot of noise in France because it directly concerns it. During a political rally last Sunday in Las Vegas, Joe Biden confused Emmanuel Macron and François Mitterrand. “You know, right after my election, I went to what we call a meeting of the G7, that is to say of all the leaders of NATO,” he explained, “c was in the south of England. I sat back and said: America is back! And Mitterrand, from Germany – I mean, from France, looked at me and asked: How long are you back for?” As a reminder, François Mitterrand died in 1996. A few days later, during a campaign event, the American president mentioned another conversation he would have had in 2021... with the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, died in 2017.