President Joe Biden suffered another public gaffe on Thursday when he mistakenly referred to Alexei Navalny's widow Yulia as “Yolanda” during a brief meeting with the press in Los Angeles.
After Alexei's death, the president spoke privately with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya in a suite at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco.
“This morning I had the honor of meeting Alexei Navalny’s wife and daughter,” he said in a parking garage. “It was made clear to me that Yolanda would continue to fight.”
Biden, at 81 the oldest president in American history, then shuffled back to his SUV.
The meeting with the Navalny family came hours after Biden publicly called Putin a “crazy sob” following Navalny's death at age 47.
President Joe Biden suffered another public gaffe on Thursday when he mistakenly referred to Alexei Navalny's widow Yulia as “Yolanda” during a brief meeting with the press in San Francisco
The president said: “He (Nawalny) was a man of incredible courage.” It is amazing how his wife and daughter emulate that.
“Tomorrow we will announce the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death.”
The president also wrote down
“Aleksei’s courageous legacy will live on in Yulia and Dasha and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights.”
Experts across the political spectrum have said Biden should step down and allow a younger candidate to run, especially after the U.S. Justice Department report that described him as “a likeable, well-meaning, older man with a poor memory.”
Biden met the Navalnayas as Navalny's mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, revealed that she had been taken to a secret morgue to see her son's body.
She demanded that Kremlin officials “immediately return my son’s body” after investigators tried to “blackmail” her into holding a “secret” funeral.
President Joe Biden met with Alexei Navalny's widow and daughter in California and promised sweeping new sanctions against Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime
The president hugs Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya in San Francisco
Yulia Navalnaya, wife of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
Biden called Putin a “sob” in a campaign speech to a small group of supporters on Wednesday night.
He also condemned his predecessor Donald Trump for comparing his legal problems to Navalny's plight.
Biden plans to announce a new round of sanctions on Friday as fears grow that Putin will send a nuclear weapon into space.
A large majority of American voters – 86 percent – believe that 81-year-old President Joe Biden is too old for another term, according to a new poll.
Meanwhile, 62 percent of respondents to the ABC News/Ipsos poll say 77-year-old former President Donald Trump is also too old for another term in the White House.
59 percent of respondents say both top contenders for 2024 are too old, while 27 percent think only the current president is old enough to be ignored.
In a Substack post on Monday, FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver concluded that Biden “should resign if he is unable to run a normal re-election campaign.”
“If you had asked me a year ago, I would have told you that Joe Biden was a fairly clear favorite in the event of a rematch against Donald Trump,” he wrote in his Silver Bulletin piece.
President Joe Biden is no longer the “clear favorite” to win the 2024 presidential race, according to top pollster Nate Silver
FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver (pictured) published a lengthy post on Monday arguing why Biden is losing any advantage he had over Trump in the race for the White House a year ago
Now, Silver argues, “it’s time for the White House to shut up.”
Biden, 81, is on track for a rematch with former President Donald Trump, 77, in 2024, with no real contenders in the Democratic primary.
In response to a question in February 2023, Silver claimed that he had said Biden was the favorite to defeat Trump by a 65-35 margin. But the president's behavior during the final campaign year, as well as his age and fitness for office, have changed his mind.
Things like attending the pre-Super Bowl interview are important to running a presidential campaign, Silver noted — which Biden forwent this month after also foregoing the tradition last year.
“That’s really not too much to ask,” Silver argued. “These are the kinds of interviews that every other president in recent memory has done.”
Recent polls show that Trump is further narrowing the gap to Biden and is even clearly overtaking him in some hypothetical duels in the general election.
Biden is the oldest president in US history. When he took office in January 2021 at age 78, he broke Trump's record by eight years.
If Biden were to serve a second term, he would be 82 years old at the time of inauguration.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to the press in the Fairmont Hotel parking garage in Los Angeles, California, on February 22, 2024
U.S. President Joe Biden next to his vehicle “The Beast” while speaking to the press in the parking garage of the Fairmont Hotel in Los Angeles, California on February 22, 2024
Considering only their own party's preferences, 73 percent of Democrats think Biden is too old, and only 35 percent of Republicans think that about Trump.
91 percent of independents say Biden is too old, and 71 percent of that group of voters say the same about the former president.
This came after the DOJ released a report disclosing its assessment that Biden had a “poor memory” and “diminished abilities” and would therefore not recommend charges in the secret documents case, so he would not proceed as before Special prosecutor Robert Hur would appear before a jury.