When Joe Biden took the podium in Nevada over the weekend, he was supposed to be giving voters a reason to believe he deserved another term.
Instead, the first octogenarian president gave yet another reason he has no business being in the White House, garbling out a story about meeting with foreign leaders soon after taking office that included one who’s been dead for nearly three decades.
And he got the guy’s country wrong to boot.
As conservative commenter and podcaster Graham Allen told his 399k followers in a social media post, “This is not a healthy sign.”
This is not a healthy sign:
Joe Biden said that he recently met with “Mitterand from Germany.”
Mitterand was the FRENCH President between 1981 and 1995 and died in 1996.
— Graham Allen (@GrahamAllen_1) February 5, 2024
The White House transcript said Biden was at the Pearson Community Center in Las Vegas ahead of the Silver State’s primary on Tuesday, where he’s facing a token challenge from spiritual guru Marianne Williamson.
(The president’s other token Democratic challenger, Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, is not on the Nevada ballot.)
In a speech replete with bashing of former President Donald Trump, Biden obviously aimed to show off his relationship with foreign leaders by dropping in an anecdote about a meeting just after he took office.
Is Biden fit for office?
He apparently was referring to the Group of 7 summit in Cornwall, England, in June 2021.
“You know, right — right after I was elected, I went to what they call a G7 meeting, all the NATO leaders,” the president said, according to the transcript. “And it was in — 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?’”
At least he corrected the nationality. But there hasn’t been a “Mitterrand” in the French presidency since 1995. That president, Francois Mitterrand, died in 1996.
(Americans of a certain age might remember that both Mitterrand’s wife and mistress attended his funeral, as The New York Times reported at the time.)
The leader Biden was referring to — at least according to a correction in the White House transcript — was French President Emmanuel Macron, a man who has been in office since 2017.
(At least he didn’t think Mitterrand was an Amtrak conductor.)
As anyone who takes even a passing interest in politics knows, this isn’t the first time Biden has disgraced himself in public. It’s not the second, third or probably 100th, either.
Whether he’s repeating and embellishing an objectively false story about a fire at his home as a senator or trying to find a congresswoman who’s been deceased for months, the man who holds the presidency has proved over and over again that — when he’s not outright lying deliberately — his grasp of reality is so tenuous he belongs in a psychiatrist’s office more than the Oval Office.
As usual in a Biden screw-up, the social media reaction was scathing, grimly funny or both.
Here’s a fair sampling. The first one, from former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, name-checking Democratic flack Ben Rhodes, an Obama White House deputy national security advisor, hit the nail on the head:
It’s going to take a lot of money from the Left to try and convince Americans that Joe Biden has made America safer. @brhodes has to sell an open border, multiple wars, American hostages and Francois Mitterrand coming back from the grave to run Germany….
— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) February 6, 2024
“I See Dead People” – Here’s President Joe Biden, Leader of the Free World, talking about his meeting in 2021 at the G7 with former French President François Mitterrand.
Problem is, Mitterrand DIED in 1996!
How can ANYONE vote for Joe Biden in 2024?!#bidenworstpresidentever pic.twitter.com/VaMZkqugZ8
— Conservative Brief (@ConservBrief) February 6, 2024
Now we know how Biden got so many votes from the dead – he can talk to dead people. Speaking in Las Vegas Joe Biden told a story about speaking with French President Francois Mitterrand in 2021. Mitterrand has been dead since 1996. https://t.co/DS4GgjcFi7 pic.twitter.com/c0veZiDOyO
— @amuse (@amuse) February 6, 2024
A political party that cared about its country would have shuffled Biden off the stage long ago — for his own good as much as for his fellow Americans.
Instead, Democrats are propping up this 81-year-old husk of a politician because he’s the figurehead their fractured elements can agree on now without cannibalizing each other in a public presidential nomination fight. (Not even Democrats can think Vice President Kamala Harris is a suitable replacement.)
In that, of course, they’re getting plenty of assistance from establishment media outlets, which can bury Donald Trump in an avalanche of negative news stories but have trouble coming up with reporting anything that would give Americans a reason to vote against four more years of Biden criminal incompetence — from the southern border, to the economy, to foreign affairs, to basic cognitive ability.
But neither the Democratic Party nor the establishment media can do much about Joe Biden’s biggest weakness, which is Joe Biden himself.
He was in Las Vegas to convince voters he was the man for the job — capable of leading a great nation through a stressful time thanks to the wisdom of his years.
He did exactly the opposite.
The Lord works in mysterious ways.
