It’s a bad time for Joe Biden, who’s facing growing pressure to bow out of the forthcoming presidential race against Donald Trump.
Calls for the incumbent president to withdraw come after a disastrous debate performance against his opponent sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party.
Members were appalled by the ageing president’s apparent inability to keep pace with Trump’s jabs and barbs.
Many are questioning just how exactly the president’s ‘cognitive decline’ was kept from the public for so long, with White House briefings descending into shouting matches between embattled press officers and reporters furious at being kept so far out of the loop.
As Republicans revel in what’s shaping up to be open season on the 81-year-old incumbent, donors are reportedly threatening to suspend funding for the governing party.
Among the high-profile figures to turn back on Biden is Hollywood actor George Clooney, who recently published a brutally frank op-ed in The New York Times telling the current president his time was up.
Rumours are now swirling that staunch Biden ally Barack Obama was apparently given a heads-up by Clooney before the piece ran, and failed to object to its arguments before it went to press.
As the pressure on Biden continues to mount, here are some of the biggest gaffes the oldest-serving US president has made during his time in office.
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There’s putting your foot in your mouth – and then there’s confusing the presidents of Ukraine and Russia.
Biden made his latest slip-up during his closing remarks at the NATO summit in Washington this week, mixing up the invader and invading in front of hundreds of diplomats and dignitaries,
Though he quickly corrected himself, saying ‘President Putin? He’s gonna beat President Putin!’, within just a few minutes going on to accidentally refer to political opponent Trump as his own vice-president.
Nor is it Biden’s only gaffe of this variety, having confused the presidents of Mexico and Egypt
One of the sharper moments from an nevertheless wince-inducing evening overall, Trump openly mocked Biden during the recent presidential debate on CNN for appearing to have lost track of what he was saying.
After Biden had stumbled through what was left of his take on the current border crisis in the United States, Trump said: ‘I really don’t know what he said. I don’t think he knows what he’s saying either.’
A few weeks earlier, at the G7 Summit in Italy, Biden appeared to wander off from a group of other world leaders just as they were scheduled to take a photo together.
Footage of the episode showed Biden moving away to give a thumbs-up to parachutists who’d just landed in the area as part of a ceremony.
Italian PM Giorgia Meloni had to skip after the US president to take him by the arm and lead him back into the fold.
Dazed and Confused
Another blunder saw Biden repeatedly and spectacularly stumble over his words at a White House event commemorating the end of slavery in the US.
Clips showed the president struggling to such an extent that his sentences weren’t actually understandable, with him slurring heavily between otherwise coherent but thinly-connected phrases.
During his yearly address to a joint session of the House and Senate, the president again seemed to consistently stumble over his words, only this time appearing to contradict his hopes for a second term.
Comparing himself to his predecessor, Trump, Biden said: ‘It’s not about him, it’s not about me. I’d be a winner… not really.’
Nor are verbal stumbles the only hazard Biden’s team have had to keep him insulated from in recent weeks.
Earlier this year, the president was seen to trip not once but twice on his way up the steps to Air Force One, the presidential jet.
After so many missteps and a decisively disastrous debate performance against his future opponent in the November election, many commentators have indeed decided it’s time for Biden to call time on his presidency.
The question facing Democrats at this stage, however, is as simple as it is immense – just who has the clout to face off with Trump if Joe’s a no-go?
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