Biden mistakenly invites people to Moscow in State of the Union gaffe

President Joe Biden also referred to murdered student Laken Riley as ‘Lincoln Riley’

President Joe Biden mistakenly invited people to fly to Moscow on board Air Force One during his State of the Union speech as he bashed the high costs of prescription drugs.

“I want to cap the cost of insulin at $35 a month for every American,” Mr Biden said on Thursday night.

“Every four years people have talked about it but finally we got it done – gave Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices on prescription drugs just like the VA is able to do for veterans,” he added.

“That's not just saving seniors money, [it’s] saving taxpayers money. We cut the federal deficit by $160bn because Medicare will no longer have to pay those exorbitant prices to Big Pharma.”

“This year Medicare's negotiating lower prices [on] some of the costliest drugs on the market that treat everything from heart disease [to] arthritis. It's now time to go further and give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for 500 different drugs over the next decade,” Mr Biden argued.

Mr Biden said the effort “will not only save lives, it will save taxpayers another $200bn”.

The president announced that starting next year, he hopes to cap “total prescription drug costs for seniors on Medicare at $2,000 a year ... I want to cap prescription drug costs at $2,000 a year for everyone”.

At this moment, the president mistakenly referred to flying to Moscow – before recognising his minor gaffe and correcting himself.

US President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on March 7, 2024 (AFP via Getty Images)

“If you want to get into Air Force One and fly to Toronto, Berlin, Moscow, I mean ... even Moscow,” Mr Biden said, adding that he would be able to get prescription drugs “for 40 per cent the cost you’re paying now. Same company, same drug”.

“The Affordable Care Act, Obamacare is still a very big deal,” he continued, a reference to when he called it a “big f***** deal” when he was President Barack Obama’s vice president.

“Over 100 million of you can no longer be denied health insurance because of pre-existing conditions,” the president added. “Well, my predecessor [and] many in this chamber, want to take those prescription drugs away by repealing the Affordable Care Act.”

Elsewhere in the speech, Mr Biden also mistakenly referred to murdered student Laken Riley as Lincoln Riley.

Nursing student Riley was killed when she went for a morning jog on the campus of University of Georgia last month.

Her death has been seized upon by Republicans to attack the president over immigration, as the suspect charged in her murder is an undocumented immigrant.

When he entered the House, Marjorie Taylor Greene handed him a pin with Riley’s name on. Mr Biden held the pin aloft as he spoke about the issue around the US-Mexico border – and called out Republicans for blocking a border security bill and Donald Trump for pressuring his party to derail it.

“I will not demonise immigrants saying they are poisoned in the blood of our country,” he said, in reference to Mr Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric which has been likened to Nazi propaganda.

Mr Biden’s propensity for gaffes is well-known, and is often seized upon by the man he beat in the 2020 presidential election – and will soon face again this November – Mr Trump.

Mr Trump even recently posted a rather cruel spoof commercial for “White House Senior Living” on social media, an outrageous attack given that he is just four years his rival’s junior.

Mr Biden has fought back, however, producing his own gaffe reel of bizarre remarks that Mr Trump has made at recent campaign rallies, such as claiming Ms Haley had been in charge of Capitol security on 6 January 2021.