Joe Biden's struggle to convince the American electorate and his fellow Democrats that he remains the right person to take on Donald Trump in November has intensified.
Facing pressure to prove his capability at a high-stakes press conference on Thursday, the US president misspoke, saying, "I wouldn't have picked Vice President Trump, to be vice president, if she's not qualified to be president," before correcting himself.
Earlier, he also accidentally called Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky "President Putin" but quickly acknowledged his mistake.
The conference came after more than two weeks of increasing pressure from Democratic officials, donors, and voters for Biden to end his re-election bid.
This atmosphere was already the elephant in the room when the UK's new prime minister Sir Keir Starmer met with Biden at the Nato summit in Washington DC earlier that day.
Starmer, on his first major foreign trip as PM, described the US president as being "on really good form" and praised his understanding during their bilateral meeting.
An avid football fan, Starmer gifted Biden an Arsenal shirt and relied on notes during his trip to keep him updated on England's semi-final score.
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