Former Vice President Joe Biden accidentally addressed fellow presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders as “the president” in the middle of an intense sit-down on health care during the third Democratic presidential debate aired on Thursday.
“The president, or my friend from Vermont —” Biden said, gesturing in Sanders’ direction as he and the Vermont senator pondered on the costs of Sanders’s “Medicare for All” proposal, perpetually resorting to sarcastic exchanges. Biden is notably no new to such slips of the tongue: he previously made the same error referring to another presidential candidate, Cory Booker, as “the president”.
The 76-year-old didn’t stop at that on Thursday however, further assuring debate viewers that he indeed has an extraordinary flair for confusing not only names, but time and place. For instance, as the talk centred around deportations under ex-President Barack Obama, he explained at length:
“What Latinos should look at, comparing this president to the president we have is outrageous, number one. We didn’t lock people up in cages”, Biden said, then proceeding to inaccurately claim “we didn’t separate families”.
…before rushing to defend the then head of state with a bit of a sum-up:
“The president did the best thing that was able to be done”, Biden said, before being asked again by reporters if he had any regrets.
“I’m the vice president of the United States”, Biden thundered as though having misheard the question.
Back in August, he also showcased a temporal mix-up mistakenly referring to the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, as the incident that occurred during his tenure.
“Those kids in Parkland came up to see me when I was vice president”, Biden said before claiming that when the survivors visited Congress, lawmakers were “basically cowering, not wanting to see them. They did not want to face it on camera”.
The tragic shooting with a death toll reaching 17 people, happened on 14 February 2018, which is over a year after Biden quit the post of vice president.