President Joe Biden made an apparent blunder while addressing attendees at the NAACP’s Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner in Detroit on Sunday. The 81-year-old president mistakenly suggested that he was vice president during the COVID-19 pandemic, which began in March 2020 under former President Donald Trump. Biden, who was campaigning for president at the time, had not served as vice president since 2016.
“When I was vice president, things were kinda bad during the pandemic,” Biden told the audience. “And what happened was Barack said to me, ‘Go to Detroit and help fix it.’”
A report by former special counsel Robert Hur in February accused Biden of forgetting major events, including the day his son Beau died. Transcripts from the interview reportedly indicated that Biden had forgotten his tenure under former President Barack Obama, asking, “When did I stop being vice president?” according to Forbes.
Recently, Biden exercised executive privilege over audio from the Hur interview, a doctrine allowing the president to withhold information from other branches of government.
Sunday’s slip-up adds to an increasingly lengthy string of gaffes by Biden. In April, the president appeared to confuse the January 6 Capitol riots with D-Day when reminding a crowd not to “forget the dark days of June 6.”
“January 6th, excuse me,” he corrected.
Earlier that month, Biden also appeared to read speaking instructions from a teleprompter while delivering remarks.
“I see an economy that grows a lot in the bottom up where the wealthy pay their fair share, so we can have childcare, paid leave, and so much more, and still reduce the federal deficit and increase economic growth,” the president said.
“Imagine what we could do next,” he added. “Four more years, pause.”
