Did Biden Really Say That to the Polish President?

Matt Vespa | February 22, 2023 7:30 AM

President Joe Biden has diarrhea of the mouth, a lingering affliction throughout his political career. Whether it’s commenting on how Indians dominate 7-Elevens or how Barack Obama is the first articulate, clean black guy to run for president—Biden has perpetually fought with the foot-in-mouth syndrome. It hasn’t improved with age, demonstrated by his remarks to the Polish president on his recent visit to the country on the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In short, Biden told his Polish counterpart that he wanted to add “ski” to his last name to make it sound more in keeping with his nation’s heritage (via NY Post):

What’s a little ethnic humor between world leaders?
President Biden joked with his Polish counterpart on Tuesday that he wanted to add “ski” or “o” to his last name because he purportedly lived in an area of Delaware with a large population of Poles and Italians and wanted to fit in.
[…]
“As a young man, I was born in a coal town of Scranton, Pa., in northeastern Pennsylvania, in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. Then when coal died, we moved down to Delaware, to a town called Claymont, Del., which was a working-class town,” Biden recalled. “But everyone in town was either Polish or Italian. I grew up feeling self-conscious my name didn’t end in an ‘s-k-i’ or an ‘o.'”
[…]
In October of last year, Biden told an audience in Puerto Rico that “I was sort of raised in the Puerto Rican community at home, politically” — despite the fact that only about 2,000 people of Puerto Rican ancestry lived in Delaware when Biden was launching his political career in the early 1970s.
Biden in September 2021 told Jewish leaders that he remembered “spending time at” and “going to” Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018 after the worst anti-semitic attack in US history, in which 11 people were murdered.