Joe Biden met with the widow of the late Russian dissident Alexei Navalny yesterday, Thursday, in California, but it seems he failed to hold her name in his memory after he later called her “Yolanda” instead of “Yulia” in a statement to reporters.
According to the New York Post, Biden’s meeting with Yulia Navalny and her daughter Dasha offered the first confirmation of Navalny’s widow’s whereabouts, six days after the 47-year-old lawyer’s death in an Arctic prison was announced.
Today, Biden said he “had the honor of meeting with” Alexei Navalny’s widow, who he called “Yolanda.”
Her name is Yulia. pic.twitter.com/ecBgLtZdn0
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 23, 2024
“This morning I had the honour of meeting with the wife and daughter of Alexei Navalny, who was obviously a man of incredible courage.
It’s amazing how much his wife and daughter are like him in that regard,” the 81-year-old Biden told a reporter in San Francisco.
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“Tomorrow we will announce sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death.
But one thing that was made clear to me is that Yolanda will continue the fight that she had started.
So we are not going to give up,” the “blunder-prone” president, as the US newspaper calls him, continued.
The White House did not comment on the apparent mix-up of names.
Biden is seeking re-election in November, but surveys show that a large number of voters – 86 percent, according to an ABC/Ipsos poll released on Feb. 11 – believe he is too old to remain in office for another four years.
