President Biden confessed that his mind was “going blank” while commemorating the Jewish High Holy Days during a virtual event with rabbis around the country.
At the Thursday event which touched upon recent anti-Semitic attacks and developments in Afghanistan, among other issues, Roman Catholic Joe Biden recalled his daughter Ashley’s wedding to a Jewish man, Howard Krein, in 2012.
As he attempted to tie in calls for religious collaboration with his personal family experiences, he said:
"We wanted to have a co-confessional wedding… And we had a chuppah on the altar, and we had a co- … it was co-officiated. Now, some of you aren’t going to like this, but it was co-officiated by a Catholic priest as well as a Jewish rabbi."
Things got tricky for the POTUS as he launched on a rambling account of his favourite Catholic hymn that he requested be played at that wedding.
"I only asked one thing. There’s a psalm-based, there’s a hymn, my favourite hymn in the Catholic Church based on a psalm, and it’s — it’s a psalm that talks about life… And they played and … I’m my mind is going blank now. What’s the song that is played where everybody is on the chair? I can’t remember it," Biden said.
Users on Twitter chortled that they couldn’t make head or tail of what he talking about.
During the same event, gaffe-prone Biden, who is known for fumbling remarks and his hazy references, also told Jewish leaders that he had visited the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in the wake of the October 2018 massacre that left 11 people dead.
However, questions have been raised, as Barb Feige, executive director of the Tree of Life since July 2019, told the New York Post in a phone interview that Biden hadn't visited the synagogue in the years after the attack.