During a signing ceremony on the final day of the NATO summit, President Joe Biden accidentally introduced Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin.”
It was a cringeworthy moment for European leaders who did not know whether to clap.
Realising his mistake, Biden caught himself and said, “President Putin! We’re going to beat President Putin. President Zelenskyy. I’m so focused on beating Putin. We’ve got to worry about it. Anyway, Mr. President.”
The 81-year-old US President caught the error and corrected himself, but it was yet another blow to his anguished campaign to convince Democrats that he still has what it takes to beat Donald Trump in November.
Later, while taking questions from reporters, Biden mistakenly called Kamala Harris “Vice-President Trump.”
Asked if he has concerns about Vice President Harris’s ability to beat Donald Trump if she were at the top of the ticket, Biden said he, “wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be Vice President if I didn’t think she was not qualified to be President.”
“From the very beginning, I made no bones about that. She is qualified to be President. That’s why I picked her,” he added.
Nonetheless, Biden proved expansive on foreign policy regarding China, Israel, Russia and other parts of the world. He reminded everyone of his role in rebuilding alliances and partnerships.
Biden was asked several questions about whether he is fit to run for President.
In response to one, he said he was, “the most qualified person to run for President”. He said that he beat Donald Trump once, “and I will beat him again”.
Biden said there’s a “long way to go” with his campaign, and that he is “just going to keep moving” because he has “more work to do.”
Asked how he can assure the American people that he won’t have “more bad nights” like on the debate stage last month, Biden remarked that the best way to assure voters was to ask if he was “getting the job done.”
Biden said that he is “determined” to keep running in November.
Ultimately, it was a performance that supporters will probably say shows he is capable of handling his responsibilities as commander-in-chief, but unlikely to convince those already in doubt about his mental fitness that he can serve another four years in office.
Shortly after Biden finished his NATO press conference, three Democrats in Congress; Jim Himes, Eric Sorensen and Scott Peters, called for him to drop out of the race.
This brings the number of Democrats calling on Biden to end his reelection bid to 17.
Orban Meets With Trump
Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban met with Donald Trump.
Orban flew to Florida to meet with the former US President after the end of the NATO summit in Washington.
Orban, whose country took over the rotating presidency of the European Union this month, has been a vocal supporter of Trump.
“We discussed ways to make peace,” Orban said in a post on social media with a picture of the two leaders meeting.
He added, “The good news of the day: he’s going to solve it!”
EU countries have complained that Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, is negotiating with the Russian and Chinese leaders, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, as well as Donald Trump without their consent.
Orban has also met with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and is said to be quietly negotiating his own ceasefire plan without consulting either the Biden administration or other EU countries.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, when asked about Orban’s initiative, said Ukraine would be rightly concerned about any attempt to negotiate a peace deal without involving Kyiv.
“Whatever adventurism is being undertaken without Ukraine’s consent or support is not something that’s consistent with our policy, the foreign policy of the United States,” Sullivan said.
“There is a longstanding pattern of Orbán working with enemies of the western alliance system,” said Dalibor Rohac, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute thinktank in Washington.
He added, “It certainly does not serve the Hungarian interest or NATO interest.”
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