From 'Islamic Republic of Japan' to 'Leon' Musk: List of Trump's latest verbal mix-ups

US President Donald Trump has long made political capital out of his rivals’ mistakes, however his recent mix-ups have now pointed his finger right back at him.He once screened a compilation of Joe Biden’s stumbles at a campaign rally. When Biden mixed up Trump and Kamala Harris during the 2024 race, Trump gleefully responded on X: “Great job, Joe!” And when Barack Obama once misspoke about visiting 57 states, Trump posted: “Can you imagine if I said that. Story of the year!”He has now said things like that, repeatedly.The latest came at the Nato summit in Ankara on Wednesday, where Trump made three notable errors in under ten minutes while seated beside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He referred to Iran as “the Islamic Republic of Japan” while recounting a missile strike, mangled the acronym for the Iran nuclear deal, calling it the “JCPOC” instead of JCPOA. Trump then asked the assembled press corps if they had “a question for President Putin” while Zelenskyy sat next to him. Biden made a nearly identical Zelenskyy-Putin mix-up at the 2024 NATO summit.

A growing list

In June, Trump called his Elon Musk “Leon” during remarks at a tour of the refurbished Air Force One, before catching himself two sentences later. Days before the Nato summit, at a White House event, he appeared to introduce Small Business Administration head Kelly Loeffler as rapper Nicki Minaj, twice in the same speech, once accidentally, once apparently intentionally.At a May event honouring the Indiana University football national championship, Trump asked where head coach Curt Cignetti was. Cignetti had been standing directly beside him throughout.Also in May, Trump attributed the 2021 US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the deaths of 13 American service members at Kabul airport, to Barack Obama, who left office in January 2017. Biden oversaw the withdrawal.When a reporter the same month asked Trump about Xi Jinping’s comments on the risk of conflict over Taiwan, Trump answered as though the question had been about Iran, referencing “their strait.”In April, Trump declared during an interview that “Ukraine, militarily, they’re defeated” before it became clear from context, he cited the country’s Navy and ship count, that he was describing Iran, not Ukraine.At a Women’s History Month event the same month, he introduced press secretary Karoline Leavitt using a description that matched her role precisely, but called her Kellyanne Conway.At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, Trump repeatedly substituted Iceland for Greenland, the island he has made a centrepiece of his territorial agenda.In a November speech in Miami, he described the city as a haven for those fleeing tyranny in “South Africa” before self-correcting to South America, then circling back to South Africa anyway.Last year, Trump twice claimed credit for resolving the conflict between Azerbaijan and Albania, a war that does not exist. The conflict he brokered involved Azerbaijan and Armenia.Ahead of his high-stakes summit with Vladimir Putin in August, Trump twice told audiences he was travelling to Russia, the meeting was held in Alaska, which has not been part of Russia since the 1860s.