President Joe Biden laughed off former President Donald Trump’s challenge to hold an immediate debate for the 2024 election.
He also showed why he refused that idea.
During a Monday speech, Biden said that shortly after he took office, he had a conversation with a French leader.
The problem was that the leader died more than two decades ago.
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As reported by the website Trending Politics, Biden was discussing some overseas leaders’ reaction to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
“Right after I was elected, I went to what they call a G7 meeting, all the NATO leaders,” Biden told the crowd. “I sat down and I said, ‘America’s back!’ And Mitterrand from Germany, I mean, from France, looked at me and said …’How long you back for?’”
Biden was referring to François Mitterrand, who served as president of France from 1981 to 1995. Yet he died in 1996.
It wasn’t the first time Biden tried to reach out to the dead.
As the Tampa Free Press reported in September 2022, Biden hosted a summit meeting on hunger, and in his opening remarks, he asked, “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” in reference to Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana, who had been co-chairwoman of the House Hunger Caucus.
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Walorski died tragically in a car crash while in her home state more than a month earlier.
On Monday, in response to an X post about Biden’s comment by Raheem Kassam of The National Pulse, one X user noted, “There’s copious evidence that, mentally, Biden passed away around 1996 as well. So this fits.”
That may be a joke. But there is growing concern about Biden’s continued mental fitness.
Trump touched on that on Monday while claiming he is itching for a debate with Biden during an interview with podcaster Dan Bongino.
“He can’t do it, because he can’t talk. He can’t do anything. He’s ruining our country. And I don’t think he’s going to run — I don’t know if it’s donors or otherwise. It might be his family, it might be something,” Trump told Bongino.
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“I’d like to go for immediate debates. I’d like to debate him now because we should debate for the good of the country,” added Trump. “We could talk about these problems, Dan, and get him to change his ways.”
When reporters asked about Trump’s challenge, Biden chuckled and said, “If I were him, I’d want him to debate me, too. He’s got nothing else to do.”
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