(Washington) A confusion by American President Joe Biden between French President Emmanuel Macron and his predecessor François Mitterrand, who died almost 30 years ago, gave rise to a video sequence that has gone viral on the internet.
Mr. Biden, 81, who was giving a speech on Sunday in Las Vegas, Nevada, described a reaction from his French counterpart at a 2020 G7 meeting.
In addition to getting the name of the leader wrong, he attributes the wrong nationality to him, before correcting himself.
“I said, ‘America is back,’” Joe Biden says in the video. “Mitterrand of Germany, I mean France, looked at me and said, ‘you know, what, why, how long are you back,'” he added, according to a White House transcript. .
PHOTO LUDOVIC MARIN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Emmanuel Macron has led France since 2017.
The video, where we see Mr. Biden hesitating and searching for words, has been viewed and shared thousands of times on X.
François Mitterrand led France from 1981 to 1995, before dying in 1996. Emmanuel Macron has been president since 2017.
PHOTO ARCHIVES AP
François Mitterand, right, led France from 1981 to 1995. He died in 1996.
The age of the Democratic president is often presented by his opponents as a handicap for the re-election of the Democratic president.
Mr. Biden has made embarrassing gaffes like this in the past, including in September 2022 by calling a deceased parliamentarian at a conference she helped organize.
“Jackie, are you here?” Where is Jackie? I thought she was there,” he said, referring to Indiana Representative Jackie Walorski, who died a month before.
But his great rival on the Republican side, former President Donald Trump, 77, has not escaped moments of confusion either.
In January, he mentioned his rival for the Republican nomination Nikki Haley instead of the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi.
Mr. Trump thus affirmed that Nikki Haley was responsible for the security of the Capitol during the violent attack by his supporters on January 6, 2021 against this institution.
An error which led Mme Haley to question Mr. Trump’s mental capacity to return to the White House.
Mr. Biden also did not fail to respond to Mr. Trump’s gaffe. “I don’t agree on everything with Nikki Haley, but we completely agree on this: she is not Nancy Pelosi,” he quipped.