Donald Trump can't seem to tell Joe Biden from Barack Obama. That should trouble you

Each of us mixes up a name now and again. Forgets something. Confuses one place for another place. As a kid, my mother called me by my brother’s name a time or two (usually when I was up to no good).

So it could have been no big deal when Donald Trump over the weekend mixed up President Joe Biden with former President Barack Obama during a speech.

Trump said, "Putin has so little respect for Obama that he’s starting to throw around the nuclear word. You heard that. Nuclear. He’s starting to talk nuclear weapons today.”

No big deal, right? These things happen no matter how old a person is. Once in a while, at least. Maybe twice.

Trump says his Obama gaffe was sarcasm

But … it’s got to be a little troubling, doesn’t it, when Trump makes the same gaffe more than half a dozen times in a couple of months?

That’s how it’s been. An innocent gaffe has become a disturbing pattern. And elements of the mainstream media are finally paying attention to it and pointing it out.

Forbes magazine documented how Trump has made the same mistake many times recently. They also note how he seemed to refer to his wife Melania as “Mercedes” during an appearance at CPAC and that he confused the “very important date” of Michigan’s primary, saying it was Nov. 27 rather than February.

Recognizing that the media is beginning to pick up on his gaffes, Trump is saying that his Obama/Biden misstatements were meant to be sarcastic.

That doesn't match what's on tape

That is a difficult explanation to buy, however, when watchdogs like Ron Filipkowski, editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.com and co-host of the podcast “Uncovered,” post on X, formerly Twitter, what he describes as a “montage of 32 clips from Trump’s two speeches yesterday where he mispronounced words, got confused, mixed up names, forgot names, and babbled insane nonsense.”

Ask yourself: Wouldn’t this kind of behavior trouble you if it was coming from a member of your family? Your father? Your spouse? Wouldn’t you be concerned?

There is an obsession in the MAGA media over Biden’s age (though he isn’t that much older than Trump). And outlets like Fox obsess as well on every gaffe the president makes.

But I don’t believe Biden has come close to doing something like confusing the names of two American presidents so many times over the course of just a few months.

If the right-wing media actually supported Trump, actually believed in him, actually cared about him, they would be reporting this. It would trouble them.

Because it should.

Reach Montini at ed.montini@arizonarepublic.com.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Trump confused Biden and Obama. That should trouble you