Biden tells crowd he recently met with Mitterrand, former French president who died in 1996

Joe Biden confused Emmanuel Macron with a predecessor who died 25 years ago in the latest public-speaking gaffe by the US president.

Speaking to hospitality workers in Las Vegas ahead of Tuesday’s Nevada primary, Mr Biden told an anecdote about a G7 summit he attended in June 2021.

The 81-year-old recounted how he told the meeting in Cornwall that “America is back”, which prompted a response from “Mitterrand from Germany”, before correcting it to “from France”.

Francois Mitterand became French president in 1981 and remained in office until 1995, before dying a year later.

Mr Biden, who at times appeared to lose his train of thought, went on to broaden the conversation to the Jan 6 attack on the Capitol in Washington DC.

“And I looked at him and… the Chancellor of Germany said, ‘What would you say, Mr President, if you picked up the paper tomorrow in the London Times, and the London Times said, ‘A thousand people break through the House of Commons, break down the doors, two bobbies are killed in order to stop the election of the Prime Minister’. What would you say?’”

The White House later published the remarks with the name “Mitterrand” crossed out and replaced with “Macron”.

Mr. Macron was elected in 2017, aged 39, becoming France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon.

In contrast, Mr. Biden is the oldest sitting US president who, if re-elected in November, would be 86 by the end of his second term.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s national security council, mocked Mr Biden’s gaffe.

He said the “world is in danger” as the “main owner of the nuclear codes” is “in conversation with the deceased French president Mitterand.”

Low-key approach to election year

Mr Biden’s speech to a crowd of only a few hundred people in Las Vegas typified the low-key approach he has taken to engaging with the public since the start of election year.

Despite the US launching a major strike against Iranian-backed forces and a resounding victory in the South Carolina primary, Mr Biden appears to be shunning the national spotlight.

He chose not to address the nation from the Oval office after the military operation in Iraq and Syria, which followed the deaths of three US soldiers in Jordan.

He also rejected the offer of a pre-Super Bowl presidential interview – breaking with a tradition established by Barack Obama – which would have seen him appear on the most watched American TV broadcast of the year.

Republican opponents say the president is not comfortable countering criticism that he’s too old or disengaged for the job and some Democrats believe he should be on the front foot.

Will Marshall, president of the Democratic think tank Progressive Policy Institute, told Politico: “He’s got to make his case.

“There are opportunities to take the offensive on the economy and even now on immigration.”

Biden the ‘gaffe machine’

It is the latest high-profile speaking mistake by Mr Biden who has previously jokingly referred to himself as a “gaffe machine”.

Last June, he called Chinese leader Xi Jinping a “dictator” at a fundraiser in California, prompting an angry response from Beijing and further straining diplomatic relations between the countries.

The same month Mr Biden confused the war in Ukraine for the Iraq War, which ended in 2011. He declared that Russia’s Vladimir Putin was “clearly losing the war in Iraq”.

His chief political opponent, Donald Trump, 77, scored a similar own-goal recently by mistaking presidential candidate Nikki Haley for Nancy Pelosi, the former House of Representatives speaker, while discussing the Jan 6 attack.

Mr Biden later mocked Mr Trump for the gaffe, saying: “I don’t agree with Nikki Haley on everything, but we agree on this much: She is not Nancy Pelosi.”