WASHINGTON — President Biden confessed Thursday that there’s “a hell of a lot more work to do” to tame inflation and boost the economy — as he delivered an error-ridden speech including a false claim that he hadn’t met Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.
“Inflation was 9.1% [in June 2022]. The United States today is much closer to 2%. It doesn’t mean our work is done — far from it,” Biden told the Economic Club of Washington.
“No one should confuse why I’m here. I’m not here to take a victory lap. I’m not here to say the job well done. I’m not here to say we don’t have a hell of a lot more work to do.”
The 81-year-old president spoke one day after the Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates by half a percent — after the annual inflation rate declined to 2.5% in August.
“I’ve never once spoken to the chairman of the Fed since I became president,” the retiring president then added.
However, Biden and Powell actually 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 sought to mop up his boss’ error, insisting that “the president was saying that he has not spoken to chair Powell about interest rates.”
But it wasn’t Biden’s only error during his speech — which kicked off with an introduction from Economic Club chairman David Rubenstein, who has loaned Biden his multimillion-dollar Nantucket home over Thanksgiving in each year of his presidency.
Biden also told the crowd of businesspeople lunching in a hotel ballroom near the White House that he had traveled to South Korea to discuss computer chip manufacturing with “President Ku-shi” before correcting himself to say “President Hu.”
South Korea has not had a president of that name.
It’s possible he mixed up South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, with the former president of China, Hu Jintao, who held that office from 2003 to 2013.
Biden also gave a shout-out to Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), whom he addressed as “Congressman Carper” — despite it being polite to refer to American politicians by their highest-ranking post. Carper left the US House in 1993 to serve as the state’s governor and then as a senator.
The errors recalled other high-profile instances of Biden being confused, including speaking earlier this year as if the French president was still Francois Mitterrand, who left office in 1995, and as if the German chancellor was 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 worried about his apparent cognitive decline.