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President Biden is taking heat for fumbles in a Florida campaign speech Tuesday in which he referred to a House member as being in the Senate, misstated the location of his son’s death and incorrectly claimed the U.S. has the lowest inflation rate.
Mr. Biden was thinking of the wrong side of the U.S. Capitol when he welcomed Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida Democrat, during an event in Hallandale Beach.
“I don’t have a greater friend in the United States Senate,” Mr. Biden said. “And I didn’t have a greater friend as vice president, nor as president. So Debbie, thank you, kiddo.”
He said the U.S. has the lowest inflation rate in the world, but only Italy and U.K. have a worse inflation rate than America’s 8.2%, according to a rundown by The Daily Mail that says other Group of Seven nations are faring better than the U.S., with inflation in Japan at only 3%.
Mr. Biden also misstated the place where Beau Biden, his son, died of brain cancer in 2015.
His son died at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, but the president briefly suggested it was overseas. Mr. Biden frequently says he believes Beau Biden’s illness is linked to the use of military burn pits and that he was exposed in Iraq.
“Inflation is a worldwide problem right now because of a war in Iraq and the impact on oil, and what Russia is doing — I mean, excuse me, the war in Ukraine,” said Biden on Tuesday. “And — I’m thinking of Iraq because that’s where my son died. The — because he died.”
Mr. Biden was in Florida to rally Democrats and attack Republicans as a threat to Medicare, Social Security and his signature efforts to decrease the cost of prescription drugs and insulin.
The misstatements threatened to distract from his core message, however. The Republican National Committee questioned Mr. Biden‘s claim he met one of the guys who discovered insulin since the last of them died in the 1970s.
“It was invented by a man who did not patent it because he wanted it available for everyone,” Mr. Biden said. “I spoke to him, OK? And guess what? It cost 10 bucks to make. Ten bucks to make.”
