Biden Confuses European Leaders, Swaps Kohl and Merkel

(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden once again mixed up European leaders, twice conflating former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl with Angela Merkel while speaking to donors at fundraisers Wednesday in New York.

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The episode echoed Biden confusing French President Emmanuel Macron with François Mitterrand during a campaign event over the weekend, prompting ridicule across France on social media.

The repeated missteps also come as Biden, 81, is battling concerns about his age which have weighed heavily on his reelection prospects. Three-quarters of voters said they had concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health in an NBC News poll released earlier this week.

In each case, Biden’s mistake occurred while he told a well-worn story about his first Group of Seven summit after taking office in 2021.

Biden has previously said that after declaring during the meeting that, “America is back,” Macron turned to him and asked how long the US would remain a global leader. Merkel, the German chancellor at the time, subsequently evoked the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by asking Biden what his reaction would be if a mob broke into the House of Commons to disrupt the election of a British prime minister.

But on Sunday, Biden bungled the story — conflating Macron with Mitterrand, who died in 1996 — some 25 years before the summit.

“Mitterrand from Germany — I mean, from France — looked at me and said ‘You know, what — why, how long you back for?’” Biden said.

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The misstep was highlighted by the campaign of Donald Trump, the former president currently favored to win the Republican nomination, and received widespread news coverage in France.

On Wednesday, Biden erred again - but this time confusing Merkel for Kohl, who died four years before the 2021 summit.

“And then Helmut Kohl turned to me and said, ‘What would you say, Mr. President, if you picked up the London Times and learned that a thousand people had broken down the doors of the British Parliament, killed some bobbies on the way in, to deny the prime minister to take office,”’ Biden said at the second of three Manhattan fundraisers. He repeated the mistake while telling the story again at his third stop.

The flap comes just two days before Biden is expected to welcome the current German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, to the White House for meetings on securing additional aid for Ukraine.

Biden is not alone in embarrassing gaffes.

Trump, 77, confused Hungarian leader Viktor Orban and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a campaign speech in November. Last month, Trump repeatedly substituted Republican rival Nikki Haley’s name when complaining that former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had not provided adequate security at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Biden subsequently tweaked Trump over the mistake in a post to X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

“I don’t agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi,” Biden wrote.

(Corrects to clarify in lead that German chancellor is not the head of state.)

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