WASHINGTON — President Biden on Thursday acknowledged there is “a lot more work to do” to tame inflation and boost the economy, delivering a speech riddled with gaffes, including a false claim that he had not met with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
“Inflation was 9.1% (in June 2022). Today, the United States is much closer to 2%. That doesn’t mean our work is done, far from it,” Biden told the Economic Club of Washington.
“No one should be confused about the reason for my visit. I am not here to take a lap of honour. I am not here to say that the job is well done. I am not here to say that we do not have a lot of work to do.”
The 81-year-old president spoke a day after the Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates by half a percentage point after the annual inflation rate fell to 2.5% in August.
“I have never spoken to the chairman of the Federal Reserve since I took office,” the outgoing president added.
However, Biden and Powell met in May 2022 in the Oval Office, and the opening remarks of that meeting were covered by the White House press pool.
Biden’s economic adviser Jared Bernstein quickly attempted to correct his boss’s mistake, insisting that “the president was saying he has not spoken to Chairman Powell about interest rates.”
But that wasn't Biden's only gaffe during his speech, which began with an introduction by Economic Club President David Rubenstein, who lent Biden his multimillion-dollar Nantucket home for Thanksgiving in every year of his presidency.
Biden also told the crowd of businesspeople lunching in a hotel lounge near the White House that he had traveled to South Korea to discuss computer chip manufacturing with “Chairman Ku-shi,” before correcting himself to say “Chairman Hu.”
South Korea has never had a president by that name.
You may have confused South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol with former Chinese President Hu Jintao, who served in that position from 2003 to 2013.
Biden also praised Sen. Tom Carper (D-Delaware), whom he addressed as “Congressman Carper,” even though it is polite to refer to American politicians by their highest-ranking position. Carper left the U.S. House of Representatives in 1993 to serve as the state’s governor and then as a senator.
The gaffes recalled other high-profile instances of Biden confusion, including when he spoke earlier this year as if the French president were still François Mitterrand, who left office in 1995, and as if the German chancellor were still Helmut Kohl, who left office in 1998.
Biden was forced to abandon his campaign for a second term in July by mutinous fellow Democrats concerned about his apparent cognitive decline.
