Another day, another blunder.
President Biden in a speech Saturday referred to his wife, first lady Jill Biden, as the vice president in the Obama administration, a post he served in for eight years.
The president, 79, was praising the first lady for her commitment to military families and how she oversaw the development of the USS Delawarethe US Navy’s newest nuclear attack submarine, as he spoke at its commissioning ceremony in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday.
“The daughter of a Navy signalman during World War Two, the mother of a member of the Delaware National Guard, the grandmother of children who experienced having their father deployed away from home for a year at a time,” Biden said in his speech. “She always holds our military and their families in her heart. And that is not hyperbole; that’s real.”
Then came the gaffe.
“I’m deeply proud of the work she is doing as first lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she was vice president and now carries on,” the president said in error, another in a string of mistakes the White House had to correct or walk back recently.
Later Saturday, the White House corrected the president’s blooper.
“And I’m deeply proud of the work she is doing as First Lady with Joining Forces initiative she started with Michelle Obama when she [I] was Vice President and now carries on,” the White House’s official transcript of the remarks said.
The mixup was among a series of snafus Biden has blundered into recently, including comments the president made in Poland that appeared to condone the idea of regime change to oust President Vladimir Putin because of the invasion into Ukraine.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said in Poland last month as he was finishing up a three-day trip to Europe to rally allies to remain unified against the Russian military operation.
Less than an hour after Biden’s remarks, the White House was cleaning up the comments.
“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” an administration official said as Biden’s motorcade headed for the Warsaw airport en route back to Washington. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”
The next day, Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in full damage repair.
“I think the president, the White House, made the point last night that, quite simply, President Putin cannot be empowered to wage war or engage in aggression against Ukraine or anyone else,” Blinken said during a visit to Jerusalem last Sunday, insisting that the US does not have a strategy of regime change in Russia.
Biden then came out the next day to say he would make “no apologies” for his remarks about Putin, referring to a printed cheat sheet during an event at the White House.
“It’s more an aspiration than anything. He shouldn’t be in power. There’s no — I mean, people like this shouldn’t be ruling countries, but they do. The fact is they do, but it doesn’t mean I can’t express my outrage about it,” the president said, noting that he was addressing his remarks to the Russian people when he made the comments in Poland.
The gaffes have led some Republican lawmakers to suggest that Biden isn’t up to the rigors of the presidency.
Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who served as the White House physician during the Trump administration, called on the president to step down on Saturday.
“Biden isn’t running the country. He’s lost and confused. He’s TOTALLY out of the loop, and when he opens his mouth, he’s constantly ’corrected’ by his staff. He needs to RESIGN,” Jackson posted on Twitter.
“We deserve a cognitively capable President!,” he continued.
Jackson was among a host of GOP lawmakers who sent a letter to the White House in February asking the president to submit to a cognitive test.
“The American people should have absolute confidence in their President. They deserve to know that he or she can perform the duties of Head of State and Commander-in-Chief. They deserve full transparency on the mental capabilities of their highest elected leader,” the Republicans wrote.
“To achieve this, we urge you to submit to a cognitive test immediately. We implore you to then publish the test results, so the American people know the full mental and intellectual health of their President, and to follow the example set before you,” the letter said.