European leaders customarily mum on US presidential elections, candidates, but Biden's changing that

In the European media coverage of the U.K. election results last week, Private Eye, Britain’s best-selling current affairs magazine, a publication known for its satirical cartoons and tone, ran a meme of U.S. President Joe Biden who appears to be calling to wish the newly-elected U.K. prime minister well. “Congratulations on your victory, Mr. Churchill,” Biden says.

The joke, viewed over 1 million times online, is one of many dozens of references in Europe – sometimes satirical, sometimes serious – of the 81-year-old Biden’s stumbling and often confused behavior in recent weeks and months, with his June 27 debate performance against GOP challenger Donald Trump the most glaring.  

In addition to Private Eye implying the president may have thought he was speaking to a World War II-era British leader who died in 1965, Biden is reported to have confused France and Italy at a recent campaign reception in New York, while earlier in the year he claimed to have spoken to deceased European leaders such as France’s François Mitterrand and Germany’s Helmut Kohl (both of whom Biden had dealt with as a senator) rather than their contemporary successors Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz, respectively. 

Recently, leaders who met with Biden at the recent G-7 summit in Italy or at the D-Day invasion anniversary in France are said to be “shocked” by his decline compared to just a year ago and the “increased frequency” of his mental lapses. 

Biden’s performance at the debate Trump in which the president appeared confused and forgetful only deepened worries. 

It is rare for a sitting world leader to directly and publicly criticize a U.S. president both for reasons of protocol and out of practicality, since such comments could harm future relations with the leader of the world’s largest economy. But the president’s recent behavior is starting to erode those norms, at least at the margins. 

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who had a long bilateral meeting with Biden as host of the G-7 summit three weeks ago, said she was worried about his physical frailty, though she thought he was “mentally at the top of his game.”  

Keir Starmer, the new U.K. prime minister whom Biden called to congratulate on his victory last week, admitted Biden’s debate performance was damaging to his reelection chances. Starmer, whose victorious Labor Party is more broadly aligned with Biden than with his Republican rival, allowed that he was “hoping for Biden but preparing for Trump.” 

Overall, the Financial Times said Biden’s debate performance was a jolt to European leaders, quoting an unnamed participant who recalled that Biden started and ended a meeting with leaders using the same anecdote. “Everyone’s heart sank,” the participant said. 

Even in the Vatican City, the tiny city state contained entirely within the limits of the Italian capital, commentators are wondering whether he should take a page from the Vatican playbook and resign as Pope Benedict XVI did when in 2013 he became the first pope in 600 years to voluntarily step down. 

While the European leader customarily avoid commentary about the candidates in a U.S. election, there's also the argument, at least in the U.S., the Biden is leading his country amid persistent inflation, a migration crisis at the southern U.S. border and wars in Israel and Ukraine. 

Biden insisted it would take a divine intervention for him to change his mind and drop out. “If the Lord Almighty came down and said 'Joe, get out of the race,' I'd get out of the race,” Biden said in a Thursday night interview with ABC News. “But the Lord Almighty's not coming down.”