President Joe Biden temporarily confused Switzerland and Sweden while praising the latter’s pending ascent to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization during a press conference on Thursday morning.

Speaking at the NATO summit in Madrid, Biden talked about the process of bringing Finland and Sweden into the defensive alliance and talked about what the two historically neutral nations bring to the table, but he could not avoid a mistake by doing so. .

BIDEN TO MEET ERDOGAN WHICH SWEDEN AND FINLAND ARE CLOSE TO NATO MEMBERSHIP

“Part of the American press remembers when I got a phone call from a Finnish leader who said he could come and see me,” Biden said. “He came the next day and said, ‘Will you support my accession, my country joins NATO?’ We called and he suggested that we call the leader of, Switzerland – Switzerland, my God. I’m really worried here about expanding NATO – in Sweden. ”

Switzerland is a historically neutral nation that shares borders with NATO members Italy, France and Germany, but it has not yet expressed interest in joining the alliance. However, Sweden has applied for membership in NATO, a point that Biden quickly corrected.

“What happened was that we called 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 are “a historic act”.

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Finland and Sweden’s leaders met with the President of the White House in May to join. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan initially expressed opposition, but gave in earlier this week, paving the way for the two countries to become NATO’s 31st and 32nd members.