German Chancellor Olaf Scholz attends a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council during the NATO summit in Washington, DC, on July 11, 2024.SAUL LOEB/Getty Images
European leaders defended U.S. President Joe Biden after a number of gaffes during a NATO summit while the continent’s media took them as further evidence he was not fit to defeat Donald Trump in November’s presidential election.
Biden, 81, drew gasps at the gathering in Washington when he introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” before mixing up the names of his vice president, Kamala Harris, and Trump during a press conference that his aides had arranged to shore up public trust in his mental faculties.
Biden has faced calls from fellow Democrats and supporters to drop his re-election campaign after a sometimes incoherent performance against Trump in a televised June 27 debate crystallised concerns about his ability to win the Nov. 5 vote and handle the demands of the White House.
While European leaders who attended the summit were diplomatic about Biden and praised the organisation of the summit, the European press, such as Britain’s Daily Telegraph, concluded that “Biden looks finished”.
“Slips of tongue happen, and if you always monitor everyone, you will find enough of them,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said when asked by reporters about Biden confusing Zelensky with Putin.
The sentiment was echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.
Newly elected British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, speaking before Biden’s gaffes, said he and the president were able to address a number of issues “at pace” during their first meeting.
“He was actually on really good form, and mentally agile – absolutely across all the detail,” Starmer told the BBC.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Biden looked “well” and that he attended all summit sessions, unlike other leaders. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was less effusive but praised Biden’s organisation of “a very good summit”.
Foreign leaders are not in the business of speculating on who will win the U.S. election, a European official said while highlighting some of Biden’s achievements including passing a package of Ukraine aid through Congress without a majority.
“We as allies aren’t going to speculate behind Biden’s back on the prospect of Trump winning,” the official said. “Nobody can say with certainty that Trump will win.”
Other European politicians were less forgiving.
Geert Wilders, whose far-right party won the Netherlands’ last election, made fun of Biden, posting a photo of Zelensky and Harris on X under the title: “President Putin meets Vice President Trump.”
Ukrainians queried by Reuters were mainly sympathetic to Biden for his mix-up of Zelensky with Putin.
“I think he was just tired,” Yevhen, a 33-year-old IT specialist in Kyiv who declined to give his surname, said.
But he also worried that such gaffes “could have certain consequences for Ukraine” – given concerns about how Trump, if elected, would treat NATO and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – if the U.S. public stopped trusting Biden
A post-summit press conference failed to convince European media that Biden can rebuild confidence in his mental acuity.
“This was Joe Biden’s chance to win over doubters. He blew it,” said a Times of London headline, while Italy’s Il Giornale concluded it was the “end of the road for Biden”.
Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described Biden’s closing press conference as a “humiliation … To put it harshly: The dignity of the office holder has been irreversibly tarnished.”
Britain’s Guardian newspaper agreed, describing the press conference as “painful to watch” and “politics as bloodsport”.
Switzerland’s Neue Zuercher Zeitung daily concluded that the only chance the Democrats had of defeating the Republican Trump in November was for Biden to withdraw from the race.
“An old man flexing his political muscles and raising his brittle voice does not come across as powerful … This president is not fit for a second term,” the Zurich newspaper wrote.
Biden has shown he is “a pro-Russian candidate being controlled by the Kremlin,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman joked on Friday, after the U.S. president misspoke and introduced Ukraine’s leader as “President Putin” before correcting himself.
Video of the gaffe at a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday featured prominently on news bulletins in Russia, where state TV commentators have long depicted Biden, 81, as a senile old man who risks stumbling into World War Three unlike Putin, 71, whom they portray as a strategic genius.
Biden mixing up the names of Trump with that of Harris was also given coverage.
Olga Skabeyeva, a pro-Kremlin TV commentator, posted a clip of Biden’s Putin name fumble on her social media feed with a crying with laughter emoji.
“The show from Joe goes on!,” she wrote separately beneath footage of the Trump/Harris name mix-up.
Biden’s gaffes come at a moment when he is facing calls from some fellow Democrats to abandon his re-election bid. The president has insisted he is staying in the race and is the best placed to beat Trump in the November election.
The Kremlin said Biden’s errors had been widely noticed.
“We noticed that the whole world paid attention to what happened … It’s clear that these were slips of the tongue,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
He said Biden’s gaffes were “an internal U.S. topic” but that the Kremlin had also noted his disrespectful comments about Putin, whom the U.S. leader referred to as “a murderous madman”.
“This is unacceptable to us, and we don’t think it in any way makes an American head of state look good,” said Peskov.
But it was Biden’s verbal slips that dominated media coverage and commentary inside Russia.
Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, said anyone could make a mistake, but that Biden seemed to make one every day because he was “retarded”.
Maria Zakharova, Russia’s high-profile Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, published a sarcastic commentary that used Biden’s error in introducing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin” to mock what Moscow says are false U.S. allegations it has meddled in U.S. politics.
“It seems to me that the notorious ‘Russian interference in the American elections’ cannot be hidden any longer – there is a pro-Russian candidate (Biden) who is controlled by the ‘hand of the Kremlin,’” Zakharova joked on her official Telegram account.