President Joe Biden has been known for his common public mishaps and verbal mistakes since before he was sworn into office in 2021. Biden has been seen many times either losing his balance while walking onto Air Force One, falling off his bike in a stationary position, or his many speech failures where Biden often can seemingly not communicate what he wants to say, many times mistaking parts of speeches for other unrelated topics. One of Biden’s most recent speech slip-ups, and perhaps his most intolerable verbal mistake yet has come as the President recently addressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the infamous Russian president Vladamir Putin, who has waged a proxy war against Ukraine since February 2022.
During a speech regarding the U.S. ongoing support for Ukraine Thursday, President Biden accidentally referred to Zelensky as his arch-nemesis, Putin. Biden’s speech was part of an event to celebrate the new Ukraine Compact, which is a bilateral agreement to unify countries that support Ukraine during its ongoing war with Russia. While honoring Ukraine’s president for “courage” and “determination” Biden ignorantly mistook Zelensky for Putin. Following his verbal mishap and an awkward applause from the audience, Biden repeated the words “President Putin”, seemingly realizing he had made the mistake but still could not correct himself. Finally, Biden was able to correct himself by exclaiming that Zelensky was going to “beat” Russian President Putin and explained that he was so focused on “beating Putin” that he mistook the Ukraine President for his greatest foe.
Once Zelensky took the stage, he jokingly stated that he was “better” than Putin, in which Biden followed up that Zelensk was a “hell of a lot better”. Biden continued to laugh off the mistake and referred to the conference as “successful”. Biden’s gaffe comes at a difficult time, as his Democratic colleagues are because Biden may not be cognitive enough to handle a second term in office.