As Bidden gaffes go, I wouldn’t say that introducing the Ukrainian leader as ‘chairman Putin’ is particularly bad. Silly, awkward, absurd, yes – but for at one time Biden acknowledged his error and corrected himself: ‘chairman Putin? We’re gonna beat President Putin.
President Zelensky. I’m so concentrated on beating Putin…. We’ve gotta worry about it.
Anyway…. The made-up-on-the-spot excuse showed a certain agility of mind. If anything, Biden’s ‘I wouldn’t have picked V.P. Trump’ remark earlier in the day was the more distressful slip: he just blustered on without realising that he’d muddled Kamala Harris with his head domestic enemy.
Still, Biden has been doing that kind of thing for once: in February, he confused Emmanuel Macron with ‘President Mitterand’, who died in 1996.
In May last year, he said he had ‘spoken finally with President Loon of South Korea’. He meant the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol.
Even as a senator, he was called ‘the gaffe simple machine from Delaware’. Or as the Washington Post once put it: ‘Joe Biden isn’t a gaffe machine.
He’s the Lamborghini of gaffes.’ Before he was V.P., he once called out to Senator Chuck Graham, a wheelchair-bound paraplegic: ‘arise Chuck! Let ’em see ya!’
All Eyes on Bidden:
So his Putin/Zelensky switch-up is hardly that shocking. It’s a lot keeping with the Joe Biden that everybody has known for decades.
The timing are the trouble. After the horror debate last calendar month, the all world is watching Biden’s every act for signs of decline.
And because his mental and physical state is deteriorating, he gives them batch of evidence.
At this week’s Nato meeting, on home soil in Washington, he required to give a flawless execution to reassure the global public that he can function. But he didn’t because he can’t.
But all the people on social media now demanding for him to go are unlikely to have their wishes granted. Biden is a stubborn old man, incapable of being embarrassed. He’s been gaffing for decades. He probably imagines the summit went just fine.
