Here’s President Putin! The 5 weirdest political mix-ups ever

It’s been a bad week for U.S. President Joe Biden.

In a mega gaffe at the NATO summit on Thursday, Biden mistakenly introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as “President Putin.” A couple of hours later, he referred to his Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump.”

But Biden, who’s facing internal opposition in his bid to be re-elected as U.S. president in November, isn’t the only politician who’s been mixing up names, places, and facts. His presidential rival Donald Trump, for example, has had his own fair share of embarrassing blunders.

POLITICO brings you a list of bloopers that the politicians involved would surely love to forget (but we won’t let them).

The one where … Trump confuses two of his favorite strongmen

Trump is no stranger to mixing up leaders, having inexplicably confused his bestie, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during a campaign speech last October.

“There’s a man, Viktor Orbán, did anyone ever hear of him? He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey,” Trump said, which would have been a lovely compliment if only he’d gotten the right country.

We suspect Trump’s wires got crossed because the words “Turkey” and “Hungary” both triggered the “things that remind me of eating” part of his brain, but who knows?

The one where … Obama muddles R&B singer with U.K. chancellor

Back in 2013 in a very unlikely case of mistaken identity, former U.S. President Barack Obama mixed up the former British Conservative Chancellor George Osborne with … Jeffrey Osborne, the African American songwriter.

During the chancellor’s briefing to G8 leaders on plans to curb tax avoidance, Obama interrupted his speech three times by offering his support to “Jeffrey.” When the news went viral, Obama apologized: “I’m sorry, man. I must have confused you with my favourite R&B singer.”

The gaffe led to a friendly exchange on Twitter (ah, remember those days), where the singer proposed a duet to the chancellor, who replied that he probably wouldn’t have made that suggestion “if he heard him sing.”

The one where … Biden confuses his French heads of state

You’ve got to feel for Biden. The 81-year-old statesman has witnessed 12 different French presidencies across his lifetime — which may be why he confused current French President Emmanuel Macron with former President François Mitterrand in a campaign speech earlier this year.

Speaking at a rally in Las Vegas in February, Biden told a story about the G7 summit that took place in England in 2021 and recounted an interesting exchange with Mitterrand — err, Macron.

“Right after I was elected, I went to a G7 meeting in southern England. And I sat down and said, ‘America is back!’ and Mitterand from Germany — I mean France — looked at me and said, ‘How long you back for?’” he said

Mitterrand held office from 1981 to 1995 and remains France’s longest-ever serving president. He died in 1996 at the age of 79.

The one where … Netanyahu feels nostalgic for Yeltsin

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mistakenly referred to his British counterpart Boris Johnson as Boris Yeltsin, the former (and very much dead) Russian president, at a speech during a Cabinet meeting in 2019.

“I’ve returned from a very pleasant visit in London, where I’ve met with Prime Minister Boris Yeltsin and the U.S. defense secretary,” Netanyahu said, before quickly correcting himself that he meant Johnson. Yeltsin died in 2007.

Netanyahu’s office clumsily attempted to edit out the gaffe in a video of his speech published on social media. Spot the seamless cutaway here at about nine seconds in.

The one where … BoJo praises a dictator for his international leadership

We’ve been here before! Biden isn’t the first political leader to mix up Putin and Zelenskyy.

In September 2022, some six months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson accidentally thanked, you guessed it, Vladimir Putin for his international leadership instead of Zelenskyy.

Luckily for him, unlike Biden’s blunder, Zelenskyy wasn’t standing next to Johnson at the time.