Biden tells crowd he recently met with Mitterand, former French president who died in 1996

President Biden told a crowd in Las Vegas on Sunday that he recently met with Francois Mitterand, the French president who has been dead for nearly 30 years. 

The comments came while Biden was warning of the dangers of a potential second Trump presidency, as he aimed to shore up enthusiasm ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primary in Nevada. 

Biden recounted a story he has told many times during his presidency, about a meeting he had with French President Emmanuel Macron during a G7 meeting in England, some months after Biden had taken over the White House. 

“I sat down and I said, ‘America’s back,’” Biden recalled. “And Mitterand from Germany – I mean from France – looked at me and said…” 

WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE 2024 NEVADA REPUBLICAN CAUCUS AND PRIMARY

Biden appeared to trail off before collecting his thoughts to finish the sentence: “Well, how long are you back for?” 

The president continued, saying the “Chancellor of Germany” asked him how he – and by extension, the U.S. – would respond if, hypothetically, thousands of people stormed Britain’s House of Commons and killed two “bobbies,” or British police officers, to stop the election of a Prime Minister. 

François Mitterrand was France’s president between 1981 and 1995. He died in 1996. 

In Tuesday’s Nevada Democratic presidential primary, Biden faces only token opposition from author Marianne Williamson and a few relatively unknown challengers. He won Nevada in November 2020 by fewer than 3 percentage points. But he came to Nevada to rouse voters for the fall campaign as well.

The state known largely for its casino and hospitality industries is synonymous with split-ticket, hard-to-predict results. It has a transient, working-class population and large Latino, Filipino and Chinese American and Black communities. Nevada has a stark rural-urban divide, with more than 88% of active registered voters — and much of its political power — in the two most populous counties, which include the Las Vegas and Reno metro areas.