President Joe Biden momentarily confused Switzerland and Sweden while touting the latter’s pending ascension to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during a Thursday morning press conference.
Speaking at the NATO summit in Madrid, Biden recounted the process of bringing Finland and Sweden into the defensive alliance and spoke of what the two historically neutral nations bring to the table, but he couldn’t avoid a gaffe in doing so.
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“Some of the American press will remember when I got a phone call from the leader of Finland saying could he come and see me,” Biden said. “He came the next day and said, ‘Will you support my joining, my country joining NATO?’ We got on the telephone, and he suggested we call the leader of, of Switzerland — Switzerland, my goodness. I’m getting really anxious here about expanding NATO — of Sweden.”
Switzerland is a historically neutral nation that shares a border with NATO members Italy, France, and Germany, but it has yet to express interest in joining the alliance. However, Sweden has applied for NATO membership, a point on which Biden quickly corrected himself.
“What happened was, we got on the phone, and [Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson] asked if she could come the next day to talk about joining NATO,” he said.
Biden said the two nations joining NATO is “a historic act.”
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Finland and Sweden’s leaders met with the president at the White House in May about joining. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially expressed opposition, but he relented earlier this week, paving the way for the two countries to become NATO’s 31st and 32nd members.
