Geert Wilders, now the power behind the new Dutch government, made a lighthearted reflection on President Biden derailing the NATO summit by misnaming President Zelensky of Ukraine, and even his own Vice President.
President Joe Biden demolished any hopes of getting positive headlines out of the diplomatic work put into the NATO leaders’ conference on Thursday when he struggled to remember the names of some of the key players in a bout of apparently serious brain-fade. Attempting to introduce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, President Biden declared to the room: “Now I want to hand it over to the President of Ukraine, who has as much courage as he does determination. Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin”.
Realising his mistake shortly afterwards — perhaps prompted by the gasps in the room and slow applause — Biden tried to claw the moment back, stating: “President Putin!? We’re gonna beat President Putin. President Zelensky. I’m so focussed on beating Putin, we’ve got to worry about it. Anyway.”
In another gaffe, President Biden apparently attempted to refer to his Vice President Kamala Harris as his main political rival, stating: “Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be Vice President if I didn’t think she was qualified to be President, so let’s start there.”
Making simple fun of the gaffes on Friday morning, Dutch populist leader Geert Wilders published a picture of Kamala Harris and Zelensky standing together with the caption: “President Putin meets Vice President Trump.”
Now long a top-polling politician in the Netherlands, Mr Wilders Party for Freedom — a right-wing populist faction focused on border control and opposing Islamification of the Netherlands — came first in the Dutch elections last year. As is common in European political systems where political power is held by several parties — rather than just two major parties, as is the case in the United States — this election was followed by a protracted period of negotiations to build a new government.
Normally, the leader of the largest party would expect to be Prime Minister — Mr Wilders, in this case — but in order to get the coalition government off the ground all participating parties renounced the role, handing it instead to an apolitical outsider.
Mr Wilders, a noted critic of radical Islam, has lived under constant police protection for decades over threats to his life by Islamists.
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