President Joe Biden told two fundraiser audiences Wednesday he discussed the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot with a European leader who was actually dead at the time, referencing supposed talks with the deceased he has boasted of before.
Biden told Democratic donors in New York he spoke about events on Jan. 6 with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose death came nearly half a decade before the supposed conversation, the New York Post reports.
The gaffe comes just days after the octogenarian president confused French President Emmanuel Macron with the country’s ex-leader Francois Mitterrand — who died in 1996, as Breitbart News reported.
Biden made the blunder Wednesday not once but twice in front of audiences as he regaled donors with tales of his first international trip as president – to the 2021 G-7 summit in Great Britain – after his 2020 election win over former President Donald Trump.
The stumble came a day after the president appeared to grapple with simple questions at a White House press briefing:
Biden Struggles to Respond to Reporter’s Question at White House Presser
White HouseThe exchange seems to be following a pattern of confusion and misunderstanding for the 81-year-0ld.
“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 recalled, according to a pool report of the president’s stop at the home of Maureen White, whose husband Steven Rattner manages 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, who served as the chancellor of Germany from 1982 to1998, died in 2017 – nearly four years before the 2021 G7 summit.
Angela Merkel was the chancellor of Germany at the time of the gathering of world leaders Biden referenced.
About 50 guests, including actor Robert De Niro, were witness to the gaffe.
An NBC News poll conducted last month found that 76 percent of voters, including half of Democrats, say they have concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health.
