European officials reacted to Joe Biden’s embarrassing gaffe, when he called Volodymyr Zelensky “President Putin,” by saying it had ruined the NATO summit and undid all their hard work.
With pressure intensifying on Biden to step down following increasing signs of his cognitive decline, the president walked into another calamity during the event in Washington.
As well as mistaking Zelensky with his arch enemy, Biden also called went on to call Kamala Harris “vice-president Trump”.
“It was awful,” one diplomatic source told the Telegraph.
After having been pleased with how the summit had gone, the sources said Biden’s “slip-up” as his campaign called it made all the headlines about the mistake and destroyed their successes in less than a minute.
“It’s taken the focus away from what has been a great summit for us,” a diplomat said.
“The Americans had put in months of groundwork into preventing another ‘Vilnius moment’,” another official said, referring to Zelensky’s outburst before last year’s conference.
Meanwhile, CNN reported that even one of Biden’s most ardent defenders Barack Obama was now privately expressing his concerns that Biden cannot defeat Trump.
They described Obama’s worries as “one of the worst kept secrets in Washington.”
CNN says Obama likely had a central role in actor’s George Clooney’s New York op-ed throwing Biden under a bus.