Washington DC [US], May 12 (ANI): In his latest gaffe involving world leaders, US President Joe Biden referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as the ‘President of South Korea’, the New York Post reported.
Biden, 81, was in the middle of attacking his 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, over his close relationship with the dictator when he made the blunder.
“We’ll never forget his love letters for the South Korean President Kim Jong Un or his admiration for Putin — what a great leader Putin is,” the US President said during remarks at a campaign reception in Portola Valley, California.
Notably, Biden’s mistake comes just over a year after he hosted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at the White House for a lavish state dinner. The two leaders also spent time together during a summit at Camp David last August.
However, Joe Biden is no stranger to gaffes involving the names of world leaders.
In fact, Friday’s faux pas was not even his first involving the South Korean president.
According to the New York Post, Biden stumbled over Yoon’s name in May 2022 also during a trip to South Korea, when he referred to him as “President Moon.”
Yoon’s predecessor is former President Moon Jae-in.
Biden has also flubbed the names of current and former leaders of Mexico, Egypt, France, Germany and Ukraine, as reported by the New York Post.
Last July, Biden referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “Vladimir” during a NATO summit in Lithuania, apparently confusing him with Vladimir Putin.
In February, Biden mixed up Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador during a news conference.
“As you know, initially, the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in [to Gaza],” Biden said. “I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate.”
That same week – on three separate occasions – the US president told an audience that he discussed the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol with European leaders who were actually dead at the time.
He told Democratic donors in New York, at two different events, on February 7 that he spoke about the riot with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, apparently referring to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Notably, Kohl’s death pre-dates the event by nearly half a decade.
Biden stumbled through the same story days earlier, in Las Vegas, where he referred to French President Emmanuel Macron as French President Francois Mitterrand. Mitterrand died in 1996.
The shocking string of gaffes is among numerous verbal blunders he’s committed since taking office, which has sparked concerns over his mental acuity as he seeks a second term in the White House, as reported by the New York Post.
If re-elected in November, Biden — the oldest president in American history — would be 86 at the end of his second term. (ANI)
