Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden mistakenly said on May 4 that Margaret Thatcher, the departed ex-British Prime Minister, is anxious about the United States under President Donald Trump.
Margaret Thatcher, the leader of the United Kingdom’s Conservative Party, served as the country’s Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990 and died in 2013.
Biden claimed at the Saturday fundraiser that he had heard from 14 head of states from various countries, including Thatcher, who are worried about President Trump.
He then corrected himself saying that it was a “Freudian slip” and that he was actually referring to the current British Prime Minister, Theresa May.
“But I knew her too.” He then corrected himself and said, “The prime minister of Great Britain, Theresa May.”
May is also the leader of the Conservative Party. She assumed office in July 2016.
Biden also told the gathering that he regretted once making a statement that if he was in high school, he would have taken Trump around back and “beat the hell out of him.”
“Well guess what? I probably shouldn’t have done that,” Biden said at the fundraiser, “I don’t want to get it down to that level. The presidency is an office that requires some dignity.”
At the fundraiser, a donor asked Biden to given Trump a nickname in response to the nicknames that Trump has given him.
“There are so many nicknames that I’m inclined to give this guy. We could just start with clown,” he said. Trump calls Biden “Sleepy Joe” at rallies and in his tweets.
Biden was traveling through South Carolina for a two-day campaign. The state will host the first primary in the south for Democratic nomination race in February 2020.
The former vice president raised $6.3 million in the first 24 hours of his 2020 presidential campaign, providing a stronger showing than any of his current rivals.
Biden, 76, brought in the bulk of that haul through smaller contributions, his campaign spokesman T.J. Ducklo wrote on Twitter, with 97 percent of those donations being under $200.
He bested other candidates, including self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who raised $5.9 million, and Beto O’Rourke, who brought in $6.1 million.
Before entering the race on April 25, Biden faced speculation that he was going to be unable to raise small-dollar donations via the internet. To qualify for the first debate in June, candidates need to receive donations from 65,000 different donors. Biden reached that mark in the first 12 hours of his campaign, Ducklo said.
