Joe Biden has made many gaffes during his public appearances. Among them is one back from the 2020 elections during his final pit stop when the then-presidential candidate mistakenly called his granddaughter Finnegan Biden as his late son Beau Biden . It is now 2024 and he’s still confusing people, places, and events which is a growing concern among his supporters and the Democrats regarding his mental acuity.
The now-81-year-old addressed a crowd of supporters in Philadelphia and accidentally introduced Finnegan as Beau. “This is my son, Beau Biden who a lot of you helped elect to the Senate in Delaware,” putting his arm around Finnegan. Subsequently, he corrected himself and called her Natalie, Beau’s daughter. However, it wasn’t Natalie, but Finnegan, his other son Hunter Biden’s daughter, as per Daily Mail.
“This is my granddaughter, Natalie,’ Biden said, before saying: “No wait, we got the wrong one.” Upon realizing that it’s Finnegan, he then finally put his arm around Natalie, who was also standing nearby, and reintroduced the granddaughter , “This is Natalie, this is Beau’s daughter.”
WATCH: Joe Biden mixes up his granddaughters pic.twitter.com/NzsHPqKw2c
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) November 3, 2020
It was one of the most significant days for Biden and his family as the Philadephia stop was barely hours before the poll closed. This also marked a second stop for the Democrat who was on a tour of two cities in Pennsylvania. On his first stop, he visited his childhood home in Scranton, where he wrote a poignant message, “from this house to the White House with the grace of God,” along with his signature and the date of the 59th US presidential election.
. @POTUS Joe Biden opens up about the death of his son Beau and the promise he made to him before he passed. pic.twitter.com/4mq42las3j
— Stern Show (@sternshow) April 27, 2024
Predictably, Biden was deeply affected by his beloved son Beau’s death in 2015, who succumbed to brain cancer. Right after he defeated his political rival, Donald Trump , the Democrat accompanied one of his granddaughters and visited Beau’s grave. The deceased Delaware Attorney General was also an Iraq War veteran and was honored with the Bronze Star Medal (Legion of Merit).
Grandparents do this all the time. My mother runs through the list of all her grandkids before getting to the right one. Often she’ll just call them ‘sweetheart’ for ease and to avoid confusion 🤣
— Tracy Smith (@tracyesmith4) November 3, 2020
It was a period of sadness for Biden, who was experiencing failure in his political career right around the same time he lost his talented son. However, it was for the sake of Beau, that he returned to the public arena, as The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd described, “Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.”
Biden himself explained his son’s wish to CNN, “What he meant was that I wasn’t going to walk away from my obligations. He wanted to make sure I stayed in the public arena. That’s all I’ve done my whole life.” In the face of tragedy, he recalled his late son, “Beau was an incredibly decent, honorable man.”