US President Donald Trump has long profited politically from the mistakes of his rivals, although his recent mix-up has now pointed the finger at him.He once performed a compilation of Joe Biden’s stumbles at a campaign rally. When Biden matched Trump and Kamala Harris during the 2024 race, Trump happily responded on the X: “Great job, Joe!” And when Barack Obama once talked about visiting 57 states, Trump posted: “Can you imagine if I had said that. story of the year!”He has said such things again and again now.The latest incident occurred at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, where Trump, seated next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, made three notable mistakes within ten minutes. He referred to Iran as the “Islamic Republic of Japan” when referring to a missile attack, breaking down the acronym of the Iran nuclear deal, calling it “JCPOC” instead of JCPOA. Trump then asked the assembled press if they had “any questions for President Putin,” while Zelensky sat next to him. Biden created an almost identical Zelensky-Putin mix at the 2024 NATO summit.
a growing list
In June, Trump called Elon Musk “Leon” during remarks on a tour of the refurbished Air Force One, catching himself after two sentences. A few days before the NATO summit, at a White House event, he twice appeared to introduce Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler as rapper Nicki Minaj in the same speech, once accidentally, once apparently intentionally.At an event honoring Indiana University’s football national championship in May, Trump asked where head coach Curt Cignetti was. Cignetti stood directly next to him the entire time.Also in May, Trump blamed Barack Obama, who left office in January 2017, for the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and the deaths of 13 US service members at Kabul airport. Biden oversaw the withdrawal.When a reporter that same month asked Trump about Xi Jinping’s comments on the risk of conflict over Taiwan, Trump responded as if the question was about Iran, referencing “their tightness.”In April, Trump declared during an interview that “Ukraine, militarily, they have lost” before clarifying out of context that he was describing Iran, not Ukraine, citing the country’s navy and ship numbers.At a Women’s History Month event that same month, she introduced press secretary Carolyn Levitt using a description that accurately matched her role, but called her Kellyanne Conway.At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Trump repeatedly used Iceland in place of Greenland, the island he has made the centerpiece of his regional agenda.In a November speech in Miami, he described the city as a haven for those fleeing persecution in “South Africa”, first to South America, and then circling back to South Africa.Last year, Trump twice took credit for resolving the conflict between Azerbaijan and Albania, a war that doesn’t exist. The conflict he mediated involved Azerbaijan and Armenia.Before his high-level summit with Vladimir Putin in August, Trump told audiences twice that he was traveling to Russia, with the meeting being held in Alaska, which has not been part of Russia since the 1860s.