The flubs are one thing, but is anyone going to ask why we’re spending $40 billion on infrastructure for the Pacific Islands?

 

President Joe Biden got briefly marooned while announcing a plan to invest $40 billion in infrastructure for Pacific islands – then skipped over the acronym for the new program he was touting after botching the name during delivery.

 

Biden announced the Pacific Islands Initiative at the start of a White House summit for Pacific island nations.

 

‘We call it the P … PI … anyway, doesn’t matter what we call it, but that’s what it is,’ he said.

 

[…]

 

The acronym comment was just one of Biden’s flubs at the event.

 

In a bizarre comment, he said he and Mark Brown, the prime minister of the Cook Islands, were both from Baltimore, when neither of them are from Baltimore. Biden spoke of how the two nations would benefit from boosting ties, while announcing diplomatic relations.

 

‘The real reason is we are both from Baltimore, but that’s a long story,’ he said.

 

Biden was born in Scranton, which lies north of Baltimore, and attended the University of Delaware, and there was no apparent connection between Brown and Charm City. According to his official bio, Brown is a longtime government employee and former Agriculture minister who studied at Massey University in New Zealand and got an MBA at the University of the South Pacific.