As Biden gaffes go, I wouldn’t say that introducing the Ukrainian leader as ‘President Putin’ is particularly bad. Silly, awkward, absurd, yes – but for once Biden acknowledged his error and corrected himself: ‘President Putin? We’re gonna beat President Putin. President Zelensky. I’m so focused 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 Vice President Trump’ remark later in the day was the more troubling slip: he just blustered on without realising that he’d muddled Kamala Harris with his chief domestic enemy. Still, Biden has been doing that sort of thing for some time: in February, he confused Emmanuel Macron with ‘President Mitterrand’, who died in 1996. In May last year, he said he had ‘spoken at length with President Loon of South Korea’. He meant the South Korean president, Yoon Suk Yeol.
The timing is the problem.
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