Biden says he discussed Jan. 6 with German leader who died in 2017

First Francois Mitterrand, now Helmut Kohl.

President Biden said at a Wednesday fundraiser that he discussed the Jan. 6, 2021, riots with the dead German chancellor.

 “When I first got elected president, I went to a G7 meeting with the seven heads of state in Europe and Great Britain. I sat down and I said, ‘Well, America’s back’ and the president of France looked at me and said, ‘for how long.’ I never thought of it this way,” Mr. Biden said at the second of three events in New York. “Then Helmut Kohl of Germany looked at me and said, ‘What would you say Mr. President, if you picked up the London Times tomorrow morning and learned that 1,000 people had broken down the doors, the doors of the British Parliament and killed some [people] on the way in [to] deny the prime minister to take office?’”

Kohl died in 2017, and Angela Merkel was the German chancellor in 2021.

At a later fundraiser, Mr. Biden described the same conversation and again attributed the analogy about storming the British Parliament to the dead German chancellor.

At that event, he attributed a reply about how long America would be back to the correct French president — Emmanuel Macron — and got the country right both times.

But at a Las Vegas campaign event Sunday, Mr. Biden had a previous French leader in mind.

“Right after I was elected, I went to what they call a G7 meeting, all the NATO leaders,” Mr. Biden said then. “I sat down, and I said, ‘America is back,’ and Mitterrand from Germany — I mean France — looked at me and said, said, ‘You know, why, how long you back for?’”

Mitterrand was president of France from 1981 to 1995 but died in 1996.