As former president Donald Trump tried to throw jabs at President Joe Biden during a Virginia rally by calling him “the worst president … who is cognitively impaired, in no condition to lead,” he mixed up the name of the sitting president with past leader Barack Obama – who hasn’t served as commander-in-chief in seven years.
Trump’s gaffe on Saturday night was not the first time the previous president, who is once again running for the highest office in the United States amid a slew of legal issues, has made the Biden-Obama mixup on the campaign trail — but he has said it’s all “intentional.”
Trump received a courtroom victory on Monday after the United States Supreme Court ruled that he can’t be removed from Colorado’s primary election ballot due to his actions related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The Supreme Court also recently decided to take up Trump’s immunity appeal and consider whether he can face criminal prosecution for his attempts to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election — a move which delays the start of his trial on federal charges in connection with the Jan. 6 events, according to The Hill.
The former president’s mistaking of one world leader over the other seemed to hush his supporters over the weekend.
Trump said during the Saturday rally, “As you know, crooked Joe Biden and the radical left thugs who have weaponized law enforcement to arrest their leading political opponent – and leading by a lot, including Obama.”
He continued to silence in the background, “I’ll tell you what, you take a look at Obama and take a look at some of the things that he’s done – this is the same thing. The country is very divided. And we did with Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn’t be won,” a clip from the speech from MSNBC showed.
Trump’s confusion between the sitting and previous president did not end there, as he also made the error when he told the crowd of his supporters, “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word. You heard that. Nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today.”
The most recent mixup months away from the November presidential election came as voters take into account both the soundness of mind and ages of Biden, 81, and Trump, 77.
A recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College revealed that 42 percent of people somewhat agree that Trump’s age makes him too elderly to be considered effective as president, while around 73 percent of those polled felt the same about Biden.
Trump has reportedly confused Biden with Trump at least eight times in recent months, according to Forbes.
During speeches, a rally and a radio interview that all occurred last September and October, he made the blunder at least six times, Forbes reported.
In November, Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social to claim that he “sarcastically” mixes up the names of Biden and Obama.
He wrote that people “go wild” pointing out that he “doesn’t know the name” of Biden and have said that Trump “must be cognitively impaired.”
Trump asserted in the post, “No, I know both names very well, never mix them up, and know that they are destroying our country.”
In the post, he also claimed to have earned a perfect score on a cognitive test taken as part of a physical exam.
During the rally over the weekend, Trump also said he has intentionally mixed up the names of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and opponent Nikki Haley.
“I purposely mix up a name, like Birdbrain — you know who Birdbrain is, right, Nikki — with Nancy Pelosi,” Trump said.
“I put them in because they’re interchangeable in my mind. Except I have to say, I shouldn’t say this about a semi-Republican, but I think Pelosi’s probably a little bit smarter, actually,” he added.
