How can you ignore it? Biden says he spoke with dead German chancellor about Jan. 6 riots

For the second and third times in less than a week, President Joe Biden has claimed he spoke with a dead world leader.

At two separate fundraising events on Wednesday, Biden told his audiences that he spoke about the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the 2021 G7 Summit in Great Britain, his first international trip as president.

But that was impossible because Kohl died in 2017. He served as Germany's chancellor from 1982 until 1998.

"I showed up … and I sat down and said, 'America's back,' and [French President Emmanuel] Macron looked at me and said, ‘For how long?' How long?' — not a joke," Biden said, according to a pool report.

"Helmut Kohl said, 'Joe, what would you think if you picked up the phone and picked up the paper tomorrow and learned in the London Times, on the front page, that 1,000 people stormed the Parliament, broke down the doors of the House of Commons, and killed two bobbies in the process and trying to stop the election of a prime minister?'" he added.

Angela Merkel, however, was Germany's chancellor at the time of meeting.

The alarming gaffe came three days after Biden told the same story about a conversation at the 2021 G7 Summit. Except in that recollection, Biden said he spoke with former French President François Mitterrand — who died in 1996.

Biden, moreover, appeared to forget the name of Hamas on Tuesday, forcing a reporter to help jog his memory.

The incidents underscore voter concerns about Biden's cognitive fitness. An NBC News poll published this week, for example, found that more than three-fourths of voters are concerned over whether Biden possesses the mental and physical fitness necessary to carry out presidential duties.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the Mitterrand incident, but she angrily declined to explain why Biden misspoke.

"I'm not even gonna go down that rabbit hole," she said.

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