First Francois Mitterrand, now Helmut Kohl.
President Biden said at a Wednesday fundraiser that he discussed the Jan. 6, 2021, riots with the dead German chancellor.
Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich quoted White House pool reports covering the New York fundraiser that Mr. Biden “seemed to say that Helmut Kohl (who died in 2017) was there with him at his first foreign trip as President talking about Jan 6th … Angela Merkel was the German chancellor in 2021.”
Ms. Heinrich posted screenshots of the pool reports on X late Wednesday.
According to the screenshots of the president’s words, he said the conversation occurred when he “first got elected president [and] went to a G7 meeting with 7 heads of state in Europe.”
“Then Helmut Kohl of Germany looked at me and said what would you say Mr. President if you picked up the London Times tomorrow morning and learned there’s 1000 broken down the doors of the British Parliament. Killed some (?) on the way in to deny the next prime minister to take office. And you think, what would we think?” the transcript quoted the 81-year-old president as saying.
According to the screenshots there were three events and Mr. Biden said those words at the “second event.”
At the “third event,” Mr. Biden described the same conversation and again attributed the analogy about storming the British Parliament to the dead German chancellor.
However at that event he attributed a reply about how long America would be back to the correct French president — Emmanuel Macron — and got the country right both times.
But at a Las Vegas campaign event Sunday, Mr. Biden talked about “Mitterrand from Germany.”
“Right after I was elected, I went to what they call a G7 meeting, all the NATO leaders,” Mr. Biden said then. “I sat down, and I said, ‘America is back,’ and Mitterrand from Germany — I mean France — looked at me and said, said, ‘You know, why, how long you back for?’”
Mitterrand was president of France from 1981 to 1995 but died in 1996.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.