In October 2024, an allegation circulated online that the American leader named his predecessor as the current head of state and asked him to help people affected by Hurricane Milton. We have checked the correctness of such publications.

On the night of October 10-11 in the Telegram channel "Ax 18+" a post appeared claiming: "Biden called Trump president and called for help for people affected by Hurricane Milton." The publication is accompanied by a quote from the current American leader (“Mr. President Trump. Get busy with your life, man. And help these people”) and a 26-second video, apparently filmed at some kind of press conference. The post “Ax 18+” at the time of writing this analysis received 2.2 million views. Similar entries are posted, in particular, in the channels “Dmitry Nicotin"(368,000), "KB"(225,000), "Veronica Stepanova"(199,000), "Banksta"(191,000), "Uncle Slava"(182,000), "Voblya • news"(171,000), "Dmitry Vasilets" (143,000), "Rhymes and news" (122,000) and "Not Morgenstern"(121,000). The news is also widely separated V Ukrainian-language Telegram segment.

Source: Telegram

Hurricane Milton made landfall on the Florida coast on the evening of October 9. According to weather forecasters, he could to become the most destructive in recent decades. Federal and local authorities were intensively preparing for Milton and recommended that hundreds of thousands of Florida residents evacuate. However, 25 people died as a result of the elements. Hurricane damage evaluate at $34 billion.

On October 10, US President Joe Biden actually spoke to reporters. Video recording of the press conference was carried out on the White House YouTube channel, and the transcript available on his website. Biden's full speech lasts 8 minutes: the American president briefly describes the already known consequences of the hurricane, reports the first four deaths and talks about the measures that the White House has already taken and is going to take together with other federal authorities and the leadership of the affected states. Biden devoted a separate section of his speech to disinformation, spreading on social networks about Hurricane Milton, which hit the southeast of the country shortly before Hurricane Helen.

After this, the American leader answered several questions from journalists. One of them also raised the topic of fakes that distributes Trump and his supporters are trying to discredit the actions of the authorities. Another question, regarding a personal conversation between the current and former president regarding "Milton", was one of the last to be asked. It was he who was caught in the video, which soon became viral on Telegram channels. The journalist’s dialogue with Biden goes like this:

Journalist: Mr. President, did you even talk to former President Trump...
Biden: Are you kidding?
Journalist: ...about disinformation?
BIDEN: Mr. President Trump, former President Trump, get on with your life. Help these people.
Journalist: Will you bring him to justice? You said that you were going to hold people accountable for such [false statements].
Biden: The public will hold him accountable. It's better that you, the press, hold him accountable because you know the truth.
Reporter: So, are you planning to talk to former President Trump?
Biden: No.

Biden does refer to Trump as president, but immediately afterward refers to him as the former president. The video, which went viral on Telegram channels, was not even edited - in it you can hear the current American leader correcting himself. However, in many posts this correction is missing from the text quote.

The slip of the tongue can hardly indicate that Biden is not in the best mental state, which is often described by him political opponents and (often followed by) Russian propagandists. In the USA to outgoing heads of state accepted be addressed by the highest office they held before inauguration (for example, "Mr. Senator" or "Mr. Governor"), but the more polite "Mr. President" is also acceptable (albeit formally reserved for the current leader of the country). For example, Bloomberg News editor-in-chief John Micklethwaite, who recently took public interview with Trump in Chicago, called his interlocutor Mr. President. The hosts of entertainment TV shows also adhere to this tradition. For example, Jimmy Kimmel did this during interview with George W. Bush. Trevor Noah, whose program Barack Obama came to in 2022, even joked on this topic: “Mr. President, welcome to The Daily Show. <…> By the way, don’t you miss your name? Because everyone calls you 'Mr. President,' but I think if they called me 'Mr. Daily,' I'd miss the days of being called Trevor." Obama responded that his close friends call him Barack, but the presenter should address him using the phrase “Mr. President.” However, the website of the US Embassy in the UK, although it calls all past occupants of the White House presidents, recommends in correspondence addressed to them, use the title “Mr.”

Initially, the video went viral among English-speaking users of the social network X. Late in the evening of October 10, it published Trump-supporting blogger @HustleBitch, at the time of writing, his post had received 10.5 million views. The caption to the post asks: “Who is the current commander in chief of the United States?” However, the author does not mention that Biden corrected his slip immediately after he made it.

Also this video posted German activist Naomi Seibt, known as the “anti-Greta” - being the same age as Greta Thunberg, she is on her social networks denies climate change. Also Seibt accused in commitment to ultranationalism and anti-Semitism, and YouTube in 2021 blocked her channel for violating community rules related to the spread of misinformation. The activist posted a video about Biden on the social network X with the caption: “Biden has officially admitted that Trump will replace him as President of the United States as soon as his last brain cell gives up.”

At the same time, English-language bloggers did not emphasize that Biden appealed to Trump to help those affected by the hurricane. Apparently, Telegram channels are focusing on this because of the idiom “get a life” used by the US President and misinterpreted by Russian-speaking bloggers (“get about your life, mind your own business”). So They saywhen they want to express disappointment in their interlocutor (in this case in absentia), because his life seems boring or because he pays unreasonably much attention to unimportant things. In this context, Biden's message to Trump can be interpreted as follows: "Stop spreading misinformation and focus on things like helping the victims."

In January 2024, Russian media already wrote that Biden mistakenly called Trump the current president of the United States - notes about this were published, for example, “RIA Novosti" And Lenta.ru. Then the American leader reasoned about Trump’s words about the economic collapse that the Republican hopes to see in the United States in the coming months, and called the politician a sitting president (literally, “the president sitting [at his post],” English). This clause is even recorded in transcript on the White House website. A few sentences later, Biden corrected himself and called Trump a former president. About this case wrote and the American media, focusing, however, not on the reservation itself, but on a disproportionate amount of ridicule from Trumpists who drew attention to the gaffe of the head of state.

Biden's way of speaking is really specific, and he is often caught with slips of the tongue and strange wording. The American President himself confessed, that he has been struggling with stuttering all his life and this gives him a lot of difficulties. However, his speech errors often become the object of manipulation by Americans who are opposed to him and by pro-Kremlin propaganda. So, in July of this year already spread fake news that Biden said he was married to Joe Biden. In fact, he was talking about his wife, Jill, whose name is similar to the name of the president himself. In 2023 politics attributed the statementas if he was born in Israel, but he did not say this.

Thus, in October 2024, Biden addressed Trump with the words “Mr. President,” but immediately after that he called him a former president and advised him to get on with real business and not spread misinformation about Hurricane Milton. Moreover, both of the references used by the politician to presidents who left office are acceptable in American culture.

Cover photo: The White House