By Agency Report
US President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump are rocking the same boat in committing verbal gaffes during public speaking, according to findings by Straightnews.
Though some experts attribute memory lapses to age, others think public stumbles of both public figures question their cognitive abilities.
Recently, Biden jocularly addressed concerns over his age on American comedian Seth Meyers’ late-night show, saying the “other guy” (Trump) was “about as old as I am”.
Taking a jab at the former US president, Biden said that Trump “can’t remember his wife’s name.”
Related news: Trump, Biden Clash Over Coronavirus In Final Debate
Few months ago, the 77-year-old Republican called his wife, Melania, ‘Mercedes’ at a CPAC event.
Biden’s verbal gaffes
Biden, 81, said “Mexico” instead of “Egypt” when speaking about Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in February while responding to a question about the ceasefire in Gaza.
Biden called his own Vice-President Kamala Harris “Vice-President Trump” – a painful faceplant in front of a national television audience.
That came just an hour after another headline-grabbing mistake at a NATO event, when Mr Biden introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “President Putin”, prompting loud gasps in the audience.
Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden’s mishandling of classified documents, released Thursday, recommended no criminal charges against the president. The investigation, however, uncovered “evidence that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
The report also caused Biden and the White House headaches by raising concerns over his memory. It laid out how the president struggled to remember key details of his life during interviews with investigators, including when he served as vice president and when his son Beau passed away.
“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,” the report stated. “He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013 — when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”
“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” it continued. “And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.
Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.”
He also said last year that Biden threatened to lead the US into “World War Two”. The second war had ended in 1945.
The investigators, who regarded Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” ultimately feared his lawyers would use his “limitations” in his defense if it went to trial.
“In a case where the government must prove that Mr. Biden knew he had possession of the classified Afghanistan documents after the vice presidency and chose to keep those documents, knowing he was violating the law, we expect that at trial, his attorneys would emphasize these limitations in his recall,” the report said.
A long-awaited report by the US Department of Justice on the handling of classified documents by Biden released last month stoked questions about the president’s mental health.
The report described Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and “diminished faculties” who “did not remember when he was vice president”, reported New York Times (NYT).
It said Biden could not recall important milestones in his life such as when his son Beau died or when he served as vice president.
Biden trashed the report, saying his “memory is fine”. Several questioned the veracity of some parts of the report, particularly related to Biden’s mental health.
US president Joe Biden said earlier that his ‘memory is fine’.
Before the report came out, the US president was under fire for getting the names of the leaders of France and Germany wrong.
Biden is already the oldest American president ever. If he is re-elected for another four years later this year, the Democrat will be 86 at the time of leaving the Oval Office.
Trump’s verbal gaffes
Trump, who refers to Biden as “Sleepy Joe” — a dig at his age, has made his own gaffes while campaigning.
He confused Nikki Haley, his last rival for the Republican presidential nomination, with former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.
Haley has taken potshots at both Biden and Trump over their respective ages.
“We all know 80-year-olds who can run circles around us…and then we know Trump and Biden. We need a president who has the focus and stamina to deal with all the challenges facing our country,” she wrote in a post on X in February.
Trump has also used former US president Barack Obama’s name when he clearly meant Biden.
It wasn’t the first time Trump has confused the two on the campaign trail, transparently attempting to cover up the blatant memory lapses by claiming that “Obama is running the show.” But if that wasn’t enough, Trump went on to try to take credit for Veterans Choice, which was passed in 2014 under Obama.
Trump also mistook Argentina for a person, calling MAGA the “greatest movement … maybe in the history of any country, even Argentina.”
“You know, Argentina, great guy. He’s a big Trump guy. He loves Trump. I love him because he loves Trump. Anybody that loves me. I like them,” Trump said.
As Trump became increasingly flustered and overwhelmed, he couldn’t figure out how to say “Venezuela” and repeatedly short-circuited.
Other glitches included mistaking a poll for a legislative bill, calling the country the “United Stage” and a “nation that’s no longer respectered,” and just generally making an uncanny assortment of noises for a candidate for the most powerful office in the world: “Diiiiing, boom. This is me, [unintelligible] bing!”
Impact of age on memory
Memory experts say memory lapses can happen at any age and they necessarily do not signal a mental decline for many people.
“Most of us have memory slips all the time. We can’t remember where we put our car keys. We can’t remember dates or names. But we don’t really notice the mistakes when we’re young. It’s when people get older that mistakes in memory seem to have more significance. Memory lapse really is normal at every stage of life,” Earl K Miller, professor of neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told The Washington Post.
According to NPR, memory lapses become more frequent with age, even when people have “perfectly healthy” brains. Dr Sharon Sha, a clinical professor of neurology at Stanford University, told the US news outlet that the ability to not remember names temporarily “is very common as we get older.”
With age, our working memory which helps us remember a phone number or a password for some time is also affected. Processing becomes slower as we grow older, meaning people may take longer to respond to a question or take a decision.
“Trying to remember that name of the restaurant that they were in last week or the name of the person that they met for coffee, that is not in itself a sign of dementia, but it’s a sign of cognitive ageing,” Dr Zaldy Tan, who directs the Memory and Healthy Aging Program at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, was quoted as saying by NPR.
Speaking to The Washington Post, Bradford Dickerson, a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, said the impact of age on brains is visible during speech, a high-speed activity, which requires “considerable mental juggling and swift recall”.
According to him, older brains are also vulnerable to stress, distraction and fatigue, which further affect memory recall.
