President Biden’s latest mix-up, involving the late French president, is just one in a series of similar incidents in recent years.
On Sunday, Biden told a crowd in Las Vegas that he had met French President Francois Mitterrand, who died 28 years ago. Mr. Biden made the gaffe shortly before entering the Oval Office, rehashing a story about his gathering with French President Emmanuel Macron at the G7 meeting.
“I sat down and said, ‘America is back,'” Biden told the audience. “And Mitterrand from Germany, Mitterrand from France, looked at me and said…”
Biden then gathered his thoughts and completed his next sentence.
Biden under fire for claiming he recently met with deceased former French president: ‘Not a sign of health’
President Biden’s recent turmoil over the late French president is the latest in a series of such events. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Mitterrand, the man Biden mentioned, served as president of France from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s and died in early 1996.
Biden’s gaffe over the weekend follows several instances involving deceased people, including mentioning conversations with people who died before he was born and asking where they were during an event. .
One such example occurred at a rally in Florida in the fall of 2022, where Mr. Biden told supporters that he had spoken to the man who “invented” insulin.
“How many people do you know who have diabetes and need insulin?” Biden asked attendees. “Do you know how much it costs to make that insulin drug for diabetes?…It was invented by a man who didn’t patent it because he wanted it to be available to everyone. I told you, okay?”
Insulin was co-discovered by Frederick Banting, who died in 1941, and John Macleod, who died in 1935. Biden, on the other hand, was born in 1942.
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President Biden previously said he spoke to the man who “invented” insulin. It was co-discovered by two people who died before he was born. (Screenshot/Biden speech)
Shortly before that, while speaking at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health in September 2022, Biden spoke about the late Indiana Republican Congresswoman Jackie Walorski, who died in a car accident in August 2022. He seemed to be looking at the audience.
“…Senator Brown, Senator Booker, Congressman…Jackie, Jackie, are you here?” Mr. Biden said, looking for her. “I think she was meant to be here to make this a reality.”
The incident led Republican lawmakers to question his cognitive abilities.
“Joe Biden’s diminished ability was so glaringly obvious that even the White House press corps was concerned,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told Fox News Digital at the time.
Texas Rep. Ronnie Jackson, who served as a doctor for Presidents Obama and Trump, called on Mr. Biden to undergo a cognitive function test.
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Biden once asked the deceased lawmaker where he was during an event. (Fox News)
“In yet another display of pathetic incompetence, Joe Biden not only thought my deceased colleague was alive, but was confused by puppeteer Karine Jean-Pierre,” Jackson said in a statement. “I made him deny it,” he said.
“You don’t have to have a neurologist to know that he has severe cognitive decline,” he continued. “The American people know what’s going on here, but they don’t believe the commander-in-chief is capable of fulfilling his duties.”
Biden also reiterated Amtrak’s story, including comments he made at Amtrak’s 50th anniversary event in 2021, which were subject to multiple fact checks due to inconsistent timelines.
“I think it was my fourth or fifth year as vice president, and there was an article about Biden traveling 1.3 million miles on Air Force One. [Two]. In 2021, Biden said, “I used to be — even though the Secret Service didn’t like it — I loved getting on the train and going home.” “Her mother was sick, so as vice president I was trying to get home to her almost every weekend” to see her. When I got on the train, Angelo Negri came up and said, “Joey, baby,” and grabbed my cheek, as he always did. He thought he was going to get shot. I’m serious. I said, ‘No, no, he’s a friend. ”
“He said, ‘Joey, what’s the big deal? 1.3 million miles on Air Force Two? Do you know how many miles you traveled on Amtrak?’ I said, ‘No, Angie, I don’t know.’ “He did the math for me and said you’ve traveled 1,500,000 miles on Amtrak. Actually, I’d probably take Angie’s word for it before I’d believe anything in the article.”
However, this story doesn’t add up. Biden’s office did not celebrate his 1 million miles on Air Force 2 until 2015, a year after former Amtrak conductor Angelo Negri died. Biden also entered his fourth year as vice president around 2013, and Negri’s obituary notes that he retired from Amtrak in 1993 while Biden was still a senator. Meanwhile, Biden’s mother, Katherine Eugenia Finnegan, died in 2010.
The Amtrak logo appears on a train at Union Station in Washington, DC, on April 22, 2022. (Stephanie Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images)
Years before that event, when Biden was running for president in 2019, he told a group of donors that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who died in 2013, was concerned about the United States under President Trump. Told.
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Biden later corrected himself and explained that he was referring to British Prime Minister Theresa May. He chalked it up to a “Freudian gaffe.”
In response to a Fox News Digital investigation, the White House press secretary said in a statement that Biden had achieved “unprecedented results for the American people” and delivered “the strongest economic and job growth in the world.”
“While many Republican officials have sided with fentanyl traffickers over the Border Patrol and quadrupled their criticism of the president for his failures in 2020, 2022, and 2023, President Biden They’re fighting every day to make even more gains, but when it comes to funny headlines: “After calling Joe Biden senile, Republicans complain he outsmarted them,” said White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew. Bates wrote.
Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz and Evie Fordham contributed to this report.
