Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison shouldn’t feel bad that the president of the United States couldn’t remember his name during a live exchange. Joe Biden can’t remember anybody’s name. When he was stumping for Democratic senatorial candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock in Georgia, the 78-year-old commander in chief referred to them collectively as “Jon and the reverend” — shades of the Captain and Tenille. Hell, Biden has been unable to recall the name of the president he served under as veep on more than one occasion.
His latest gaffe, however, was serious enough to get the attention of major news outlets. So was the manner in in which he whiffed on the name of one of America’s strongest and most vital allies. Watch:
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Not only does he refer to Morrison as “that fella Down Under,” this after an uncomfortably long pause. But he goes on the add the ultra-familiar “Thanks, pal.”
Newsweek writes that Australians are “aghast”:
Many took to social media in Australia to speculate whether it was a memory lapse, another gaffe, or just an attempt at informality and banter. …
In any case, it seems that the U.S. president has unwittingly coined a new nickname, as #ThatFellaDownUnder started trending.
Kirsten Ferguson, a writer and speaker from Queensland, tweeted: “Surely ‘That fella Down Under’ is the equivalent of running into someone in the pub whose name you can’t remember and can only come up with ‘Maate’.”…
For Americans who aren’t sufficiently horrified by what the Afghanistan pullout reveals about the president’s foreign policy cred, how does this make them feel?
As for Biden, having him in the White House is beginning to feel a lot like have an old gas-guzzling junker with 250,000 miles on it in the garage. Each day something new breaks down, the fenders are held on with duct tape, and the thing makes a God-awful racket whenever you drive it. How long are Americans willing to tolerate the broken and decrepit machine in the Oval Office before they demand a trade-in?
