Appearing on Seth Meyers’ late-night show, NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers,” President Joe Biden spread a false claim about former President Donald Trump in an attempt to prove his claim that Trump is the one who is really suffering from mental decline. The president then proceeded to lose his train of thought, still while trying to attack Trump’s mental sharpness.
That began when the host, Seth Meyers, raised the concern of many voters over Biden’s age, noting that it has become a “real concern for American voters.” Continuing, Mr. Meyers asked Biden how he plans to convince American voters that he is something other than senile and, despite his age, is able to run the country.
Biden responded with an attempted attack on Trump that ended quite poorly for him. Beginning, Biden let loose with a false claim about Trump supposedly not being able to remember Melania’s name. He said, “number one, you’ve got to take a look at the other guy. He’s about as old as I am, but he can’t remember his wife’s name.”
For reference, the claim that Trump forgot Melania’s name came from a speech he gave at CPAC. During the speech, he was joking about Biden and said, as Snopes reports, “[Biden] trips over the machinery and […] if there’s a wall behind him, he ends up walking into the wall […]. [The U.S. Secret Service] will run up and grab him and take him off the stage. This is what we have as our president. But the worst thing is when I do that… the fake news… I call up my wife, our great first lady. She was a great. People love her. People love her…”
He then turned to the event organizer, Mercedes Schlapp, and said, as the crowd applauded, “Oh, look at that. Wow, Mercedes, that’s pretty good.” So, Trump did not forget Melania’s name during the speech, but was referring to a different woman and congratulating that woman for the event and the enthusiasm of the crowd.
Trump, for his part, tore into Biden for the false claim Biden made on Meyers’ show. “He went on a very poorly rated show last night, and he talked about Donald Trump and his wife — I don’t know the name of my wife. He was referring to the fact that at CPAC, we’re at a sold out speech, the biggest audience they’ve had in years, I think maybe ever,” Trump said.
He continued, “I made the statement that Melania was very popular because when I mentioned her name, the audience went wild. I then looked at the two people, man and wife, Matt and Mercedes Schlapp. And I said, ‘Wow, they really liked the First Lady.’ So this got taken as the fact that I thought Mercedes was the First Lady … has nothing to do with that.” He then concluded, “These people are really dishonest. They are absolutely something. They have a horrible candidate who’s a horrible president.”
