ENTERTAINMENT
United States President Joe Biden goes viral after mixing up Taylor Swift and Britney Spears
It’s not clear whether President Biden knows his “Karma” from his “Crazy” following his Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony.
Thanksgiving is just around the corner and President Joe Biden carried out an annual White House tradition on Monday by pardoning two turkeys named Liberty and Bell. And while it’s not exactly clear whether Biden is able to tell the two birds apart, he had rather more difficulty distinguishing between Taylor Swift and Britney Spears during the ceremony, which happened to fall on his 81st birthday.
What did Biden say about Swift and Britney?
The Democrat likened Liberty and Bell’s “achievement” to getting a ticket for sold-out gig by a pop superstar, he just wasn’t entirely sure which one. “Just to get here, Liberty and Bell had to beat some tough odds and competition. They had to work hard, to show patience, and be willing to travel over 1,000 miles. You could say it’s even harder than getting a ticket to the Renaissance tour or, or Britney’s tour. She’s down, it’s kind of warm in Brazil right now.”
We’ll give the president the benefit of the doubt and say he’s clearly aware the Renaissance tour was recently completed by Beyoncé, although it is of course Swift who is “down in Brazil right now” rather than Britney. Maybe the fact Biden is aware the “Bad Blood” singer is in South America at all, however, suggests he is something of a fan.
A particularly intense heatwave in Brazil has hit the headlines in recent days, with one fan tragically dying during a Swift Eras Tour concert in Rio de Janeiro. The 33-year-old herself was filmed struggling to breathe at one point during the gig and postponed a later show due to “extreme temperatures”.
Biden no stranger to mix-ups
Biden is, of course, no stranger to such mix-ups, previously calling the New Zealand rugby team, nicknamed the “All Blacks”, the “Black and Tans”, a British military force that fought the Irish Republican Army in the 1920s. He had claimed his distant cousin was a former rugby player who had beaten “the Black and Tans”, an error which was corrected in the White House’s official transcript of his speech.
The day before Biden’s Swift-Spears gaffe, he had also gone viral for telling a six-year-old girl that he “loved her ears” (she was wearing a headband with pointed ears) before asking her if she was 17-years-old, to which she replied she was six (we can only assume he was joking, on this occasion).