Topline
Former President Donald Trump mixed up two of his political nemeses, President Joe Biden and former President Barack Obama, for at least the seventh time in recent months Saturday—the latest in a series of gaffes by the 77-year-old former president that’s made him the target of a line of attack typically used against the 80-year-old president.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is seen during the UFC 295 event at Madison Square Garden on … [+]
Key Facts
Speaking from New Hampshire Saturday, Trump, recounting a recent interview he watched of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said Orban was asked “what would you advise President Obama? The whole world seems to be exploding.”
Trump also referenced Obama when he clearly meant Biden, at a rally in Ottumwa, Iowa, on October 1, twice in a Fox News Radio interview on October 11 and three times during a September 15 speech before faith leaders in Washington.
The incidents are among a series of misstatements from Trump in recent months that his political foes have sought to capitalize on—the DeSantis campaign has been highlighting his rhetorical blunders on X, formerly known as Twitter, sometimes with the help of the Biden campaign.
Biden-Harris HQ reshared a tweet from the DeSantis War Room account featuring a video of Trump referring to Sioux City, Iowa, as “Sioux Falls” before Iowa Republican state Sen. Bradley Zaun came on stage to correct him.
The DeSantis campaign also shared an clip of Trump appearing to confuse former President George W. Bush and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush during a September 25 speech in Summerville, South Carolina, and another incident in New Hampshire in October when he said Orban was the “leader of Turkey.”
Trump correctly stated Orban’s title a week later in Sioux City, but wrongly stated that Hungary shares a “front” with Russia (neither Hungary nor Turkey border Russia).
Again appearing to mix up world leaders while praising Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jingping and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un during a November 8 rally in Florida, Trump said Kim leads a country of 1.4 billion people (there are only 26 million people in North Korea, though he might have meant China, which has 1.4 billion).
Big Number
39. That’s the percentage of voters in a Siena College/New York Times survey of six battleground states released last week who said Trump is too old to be president, compared to 71% who said the same about Biden.
Key Background
Biden has a long history of both physical and verbal missteps that have come under heightened scrutiny as he campaigns for re-election. He has been seen on camera several times this year tripping while making his way up and down the stairs of Air Force One, and fell particularly hard on stage at an Air Force graduation ceremony in June. Trump has seized on Biden’s slip-ups to argue his mental acuity, rather than his age, is the issue. “We have a guy in the White House who can’t put two sentences together and who could not find his way off this stage,” Trump said in New Hampshire Saturday. And in Florida last week, he told a crowd, “Biden’s not too old . . . he’s too incompetent.” Biden and Trump are the likely nominees for their respective parties, with Trump leading the GOP primary field by double-digit margins and Biden’s incumbent status all but guaranteeing him a spot on the ballot next November, though both have relatively low approval ratings at around 40%. A string of recent polls showing Biden trailing Trump, including the New York Times survey that found the president was behind in five of six battleground states, have raised alarms among Democrats, with some in Biden’s orbit suggesting he should consider bowing out of the race. Biden, who has spoken openly about his struggles managing a lifelong stutter, has acknowledged his tendency to misspeak, calling himself a “gaffe machine” and has also said he understands voters’ concerns about his age, urging them to focus on his policy record instead.
Contra
“The contrast is Biden falling onstage, mumbling his way through a speech, being confused on where to walk and tripping on the steps of Air Force One,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement to the Washington Post. “There’s no correcting that, and that will be seared into voter’s minds.”