Zelensky or Putin, Kamala or Trump, Asia or Europe. These were some of the lapses made by President Joe Biden during the long-awaited press conference he gave on Thursday to, on the one hand, close the NATO summit held this week in Washington and, on the other, defend his candidacy for the elections next November. The Democrat answered 11 questions in an appearance lasting almost an hour and in at least three of them he got his answers wrong. However, the first mistake of the afternoon, and perhaps the most serious, occurred before the press conference, when the president introduced the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, as “President Putin” at an event that day. He tried to correct himself immediately, but the damage was already done.
The second blunder came with the first question from the press during his appearance, which had started an hour late. After being asked if he thinks Vice President Kamala Harris could beat Donald Trump if she were head of the House, ticketif she were nominated instead, Biden again confused two names: “I would not have chosen Vice President Trump if I did not believe she was fit to be vice president.” He was actually referring to Harris. In this case, he did not notice the error at the time, as he did with Zelensky, and it was not until after the appearance that he tried to rectify via X. “By the way: Yes, I know the difference,” Biden wrote. “One is a prosecutor, and the other is a criminal.” The correction came too late for Trump, who had already mocked the error on his social networks.
The president also confused Asia with Europe during the third question of the night, when he was talking about microchip manufacturing companies. And later, in the fifth question, Biden said he was following the orders of his “commander in chief.” As president of the United States, Biden is Commander in Chief of the country’s armed forces. In this case, he was referring to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition to these gaffes, Biden, 81, stuttered in many of his answers and whenever he lost the thread he would rely on a “commander in chief.”de todas formas” (anyway) to take it up again. There were many de todas formas in less than 60 minutes.