President Biden on Thursday claimed to have known Russian leader Vladimir Putin for “more than 40 years,” despite the fact that Putin served as a KGB agent in the 1980s.
The gaffe came during an interview with ABC News host David Muir as the president visited the Normandy American Cemetery in France to mark the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings.
“I’ve known him for over 40 years. For 40 years, he’s worried about me,” Biden said, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine. “He’s not a good man. He’s a dictator and he’s struggling to hold his country together while he goes on the offensive.”
Biden under fire for gaffe, urging Americans to ‘choose liberty over democracy’
In a television news interview on Thursday, President Biden said he has known Russian President Vladimir Putin for 40 years. (Associated Press)
After graduating from Leningrad State University, Putin began working as an intelligence officer for the KGB in 1975. He stayed in the East German city of Dresden in 1985 and witnessed the collapse of the communist state in 1989.
He then began a government career that saw him rise to the upper echelons of Russian politics, with Putin having held either the position of president or prime minister continuously since 1999.
Biden’s comments come amid a string of public gaffes and missteps that have led critics to question his cognitive abilities, most recently raising eyebrows in the White House Rose Garden last month when he said: Hersh Goldberg Pollin, an American-Israeli Also in attendance was Sheikh Mohammed Azir, who is currently being held by Hamas.
“My administration is working around the clock to free the remaining hostages, just as we’ve already freed those already held, and we have Hersh Goldberg Pollin with us today,” Biden said, before quickly correcting himself.
“And now he is no longer with us, but remains in Hamas custody,” Biden said, referring to the 23-year-old man’s parents, who were in attendance that day.
Trump threatened with jail if he misses hush money trial as Biden campaigns in Pennsylvania
Speaking at a campaign event in Michigan on May 19, Biden claimed he served as vice president during the COVID-19 pandemic and that former President Barack Obama had deployed him to Detroit to help with COVID-19 response efforts.
“When I was vice president, things were pretty bad with the pandemic,” he said, “and what happened was Barack said to me, ‘Go to Detroit and help us make this better.'”
At a union conference in Washington, D.C., in April, he read aloud instructions from a teleprompter.
“I think that as we grow our economy from the middle class down, and the wealthy pay their fair share, we provide child care and paid leave and many other things, we reduce the federal deficit and we spur economic growth. And I want you to imagine, folks, what we can do next. Four more years. Take a breath,” Biden said.
President Biden previously claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was currently “losing the war in Iraq” – an apparent gaffe that drew criticism on social media. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images)
Click here to get the FOX News app
That same month, he urged Americans to “choose liberty over democracy” and re-elect him. The White House recently A speech full of gaffes It was submitted to the NAACP in May.
