He said he talked to Helmut, he didn't say he was alive. That's an important distinction.
Do you know who writes most of my headlines? Thats right; Mark F-cking Twain. I fire up a seance every morning 5 am on the dot and we start working on today's news.
Biden blunders again — says he discussed Capitol riot with ex-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017
By Victor Nava, NY Post
Published Feb. 8, 2024
For the third time this week, President Biden told an audience that he discussed the Jan, 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol with European leaders who were actually dead at the time.
On Wednesday, Biden told Democratic donors in New York that he spoke about the riot with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, whose death pre-dates the event by nearly half a decade.
The shocking gaffe comes just days after the 81-year-old president confused French President Emmanuel Macron with the country’s ex-leader Francois Mitterrand — who died in 1996.
Biden made the blunder Wednesday in front of audiences at two separate fundraisers as he regaled donors with an anecdote about his first international trip as president – to the 2021 G-7 summit in Great Britain – after his 2020 election win over former President Donald Trump.
“I showed up … and I sat down and said, ‘America’s back,’ and [French President Emmanuel] Macron looked at me and said, ‘For how long?’ How long? Not a joke,” Biden recalled, according to a pool report of the president’s stop at the home of Maureen White, whose husband Steven Rattner manages billionaire former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s fortune.
“Helmut Kohl said, ‘Joe, what would you think if you picked up the phone and picked up the paper tomorrow and learned in the London Times, on the front page, that 1,000 people stormed the Parliament, broke down the doors of the House of Commons and killed 2 bobbies in the process … trying to stop the election of a prime minister?’” he added.
President Joe Biden waves on the South Lawn of the White House after attending fundraisers in New York, February 7, 2024.
About 50 guests, including actor Robert De Niro, were witness to the gaffe.
Biden also referenced “Helmut Kohl of Germany” during the telling of a nearly identical anecdote during a stop at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel near Columbus Circle, for an event hosted by Dr. Ramon Tallaj, chairman of the nonprofit SOMOS Community Care and a member of Mayor Eric Adams’s COVID-19 recovery task force.
The president stumbled through the same story on Sunday in Las Vegas, with one of the only differences being that he recalled Mitterrand, rather than Kohl, presenting him with the hypothetical.
“It was in the south of England. And I sat down and I said, ‘America is back,’ and Mitterrand from Germany, I mean from France, looked at me and said – said, ‘you know what — why — how long you back for?’” Biden said in the campaign speech.
Mitterrand served two terms as president between 1981 and 1995. He died on January 8, 1996 at the age of 79.
Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel gesturing at official birthday reception for Kohl on May 5, 2010 in Ludwigshafen, Germany.
Biden’s latest gaffe is one of many verbal blunders he’s committed since taking office, which have sparked concerns over his mental acuity as he seeks a second term in office.
In one of his most infamous verbal misfires, Biden sought out Indiana Rep. Jackie Walorski at a White House event held eight weeks after her high-profile death.
“Representative Jackie — are you here? Where’s Jackie?” the president asked from the podium during the October 2022 function. “I think she was going to be here.”
Biden’s latest gaffe is one of many verbal blunders he’s committed since taking office, which have sparked concerns over his mental acuity as he seeks a second term in office.
The gaffe came after Biden had already released a lengthy statement mourning Walorski’s death.
Already the oldest president in US history, Biden would be 86 by the end of his second term, if re-elected.