During a campaign event Sunday in Detroit, President Joe Biden claimed he was vice president during the coronavirus pandemic -- a disaster that came nearly four years after Biden left office.
The latest head-scratching gaffe from the 81-year-old came days after many of Biden's supporters claimed his presumed 2024 rival, former President Donald Trump, is mentally unfit to return to the White House for another term.
Biden was addressing members of the NAACP in the presence of Democratic Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, The New York Post reported.
The president then made an unfounded claim he had worked with Duggan to “fix” Detroit during an apparent reference to the COVID pandemic.
"When I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic," he said in a clip that is circuiting on social media,
Biden added, “And, what happened was Barack [Obama] said to me, ‘Go to Detroit – help fix it.’”
BIDEN: "When I was vice president, things were kinda bad during the pandemic..."
(Biden was not vice president during the pandemic) pic.twitter.com/McZXfjgr2u
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) May 20, 2024
The president then joked that Duggan had seen more of him than he would have wanted to.
”Well, the poor mayor – he's spent more time with me than he ever thought he's going to have to,” Biden said.
Duggan immediately stood up to shake Biden’s hand.
Biden served as Obama’s vice president from January 2009 to January 2017. The COVID pandemic did not impact global health, finance and society until more than three years into Biden’s short time as a private citizen from January 2017 until January 2021.
While Biden was serving as vice president for eight years under Obama, the White House did navigate the H1N1 or “swine flu” outbreak in 2009-10.
However, Duggan did not take office as Detroit’s mayor until January 2014, three years after the health scare. Democrat David Bing was the mayor of Detroit from May 2009 until he was succeeded by Duggan.
As Politico noted when Biden was running for president in 2020 in the early weeks of the COVID pandemic, Biden’s handling of the H1N1 outbreak was heavily criticized.
Biden was accused of “fearmongering” when he broke with the rest of the Obama administration and warned Americans in a speech not to travel amid the public health emergency.
“I wouldn’t go anywhere in confined places right now,” Biden said, leading to a scramble from White House officials to repair the damage.
Politico reported on the pushback from inside the Obama White House:
“Biden’s pessimism contrasted sharply with the reassurances President Barack Obama had given … when he said there was no need to panic even as he declared a national health emergency.
“In a matter of hours, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Deputy Secretary of State Jack Lew were summoned to the White House and assigned to clean up the mess Biden made.”
According to a White House archive, Biden did travel to Detroit in August 2009 but according to the news release, the then-VP was not in the city to discuss H1N1 infections.
The news release from the White House stated, “Vice President Biden will travel to Detroit, MI, where he will deliver remarks on the economy.”
Biden hosted two events in Detroit on Sunday – one with black voters at a cafe and another at a convention center where he claimed he was vice president during the pandemic, The Detroit News reported.
The White House did not publish a transcript of his remarks from the event with Duggan at Detroit's Huntington Place convention center.
