Last month, President Joe Biden of the United States, who has been facing controversy over cognitive decline due to old age, made another verbal mistake at a NATO event. This time, he mistakenly called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
According to local media, on Thursday, after giving a speech at a Ukraine support event held as a side event of the NATO summit in Washington, DC, Biden mistakenly said, “Ladies and gentlemen — President Putin. President Putin,” while passing the microphone to Zelenskyy. Realizing his mistake before leading the podium, Biden corrected himself, saying, “He’s gonna beat President Putin, President Zelenskyy.”
Biden then shook hands with Zelenskyy and said, “I’m so focused on beating Putin, we’ve got to worry about it.”
In response to Biden’s verbal slip, Zelenskyy quipped, “I’m better,” Biden replied, “Much better.”
The New York Times (NYT) noted that Biden’s mistake was inappropriate and that major news outlets included the incident in their evening news reports.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited Washington DC to attend the NATO summit, defended Biden in an interview with the BBC. He stated that Biden was in “really good form.” Regarding the controversy over Biden’s cognitive decline, Starmer said, “We went through a huge number of issues at pace. He was actually on really good form and mentally agile – absolutely across all the detail.”
