A befuddled President Biden casually maligned the Irish while botching his wife’s family history during a gaffe-filled appearance in Delaware on Friday.
“I may be Irish, but I’m not stupid,” Biden inexplicably said as he greeted 102-year-old World War II veteran Ray Firmani during a town hall on veterans’ benefits in New Castle, Del.
“I married Dominic Giacoppa’s daughter,” Biden continued. “So, you know, I got a little Italian in me now, you know?”
The audience of military veterans and federal officials received the off-script comments in puzzled silence — but critics on Twitter took comic umbrage at the ethnic slur.
“Hate crime,” self-described Irish Catholic reporter Mary Margaret Olohan posted, with a video clip of the offending moment.
“Just casual old school anti-Irish stereotyping,” Washington Examiner reporter Jerry Dunleavy wrote.
Others pointed out that Biden had muddled his wife Jill’s genealogy.
“Giacoppa was actually Jill Biden’s grandfather, not her father,” wrote Steve Guest, a communications adviser for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. “Joe Biden gets the dumbest things wrong.”
The bizarre comments — which rehashed a line Biden trotted out on St. Patrick’s Day earlier this year — came moments before the 80-year-old president spun a chronologically impossible yarn that conjured an apparently mythical Purple Heart for his uncle Frank Biden, who fought in World War II.
They were the latest in a long stream of gaffes, flubs, and outright fabrications Biden has committed over five decades in public life.
Biden’s mental acuity as the oldest-ever US president has been increasingly in question — particularly after he searched a crowd for the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) in September, six weeks after publicly mourning her death and calling her family to offer condolences.
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