Oops! I Did It Again: Biden Calls Ukraine ‘Iraq’ Twice in Two Days
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Whether it was serving as a US Senator, Vice President, or President, Joe Biden has earned a reputation around Washington for flubbing his speeches, including both saying the wrong names or words, or giving voice to things that were probably best left unsaid.
Several times in recent days, Biden has made some embarrassing mess-ups, including several instances of referring to Iraq when he meant to refer to Ukraine.
The first came on Tuesday, when the 80-year-old head of state was speaking at a campaign reception in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
“Think about this: If anybody told you - and my staff wasn’t so sure, either - that we’d be able to bring all of Europe together in the onslaught on Iraq [Ukraine] and get NATO to be completely united, I think they would have told you it’s not likely. The one thing Putin counted on was being able to split NATO,” Biden said, according to a transcript published by the White House, which added an insert in the text to clarify that Biden meant to say Ukraine instead of Iraq.
Then on Wednesday, he did it again. This time, it was captured on film.
On the helicopter tarmac outside the White House, Biden was asked by a gaggle of reporters: "To what extent has Vladimir Putin been weakened by recent events?"
“It’s hard to tell, but he is clearly losing the war in Iraq, he’s losing the war at home and he has become a bit of a pariah around the world,” Biden replied.
“It’s not just NATO, it’s not just the European Union, it’s Japan, it’s 40 nations,” he added.
In another answer not captured on film, Biden reportedly referred to "my new best friend the prime minister of China,” although the president caught his mistake that time and clarified he meant to say Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who recently paid a state visit to the US capital city.
Biden and his family have connections to both Iraq and Ukraine. During the eight years Biden was the US Vice President, he oversaw the implementation of US policy in Iraq, where US forces were locked in a brutal occupation war against Iraqi insurgent forces. His son, Beau Biden, served in the US Army in Iraq and died in 2015 of brain cancer that was likely caused by exposure to toxic materials during his deployment.
As vice president, Biden also oversaw US policy in Ukraine during and after the February 2014 coup in Kiev, which enjoyed extensive US backing and brought a Washington-friendly, ultra-nationalist government to power. Another of his sons, Hunter Biden, was an investor in the Burisma gas company that did business in Ukraine, and became embroiled in an ethics probe by the Ukrainian government before it was dropped in 2015 amid pressure from Joe Biden.
Under his presidency that began in 2021, Joe Biden has funneled weapons and support to Ukraine to sponsor a proxy war against the country’s Russophone minority and, after February 2022, Russian forces engaged in a special operation in the country to root out its neo-Nazi elements.
