During the 2024 campaign, Trump repeatedly said “Obama” when he appeared to mean President Joe Biden. USA Today, citing Forbes, reported in March 2024 that he had confused the two at least seven times in recent months, including a September 2023 speech in which he said, “with Obama, we won an election that everyone said couldn't be won.” At a March 2, 2024, rally in Richmond, Virginia, he said, “Putin, you know, has so little respect for Obama that he's starting to throw around the nuclear word.”
In November 2023, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he swaps the names “sarcastically” and that he knows “both names very well, never mix them up.” Snopes noted that this sits awkwardly with his own Richmond remark that he does not personally believe claims that Obama is running the country.
At a Jan. 19, 2024, rally in Concord, New Hampshire, Trump also appeared to confuse Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi while discussing Jan. 6, saying “Nikki Haley is in charge of security.” Haley, who was not in office on Jan. 6, 2021, said the next day that voters should not have to question whether a president is “mentally fit.”
Correction (October 14, 2026): Two dead links (Reuters and AP) were replaced with NBC News, Snopes and USA Today coverage. Two quotes in the earlier version (“We're beating Obama in the polls” and a claim that he said at a rally he was running against Obama) could not be found in any live source and were removed; they have been replaced with documented examples. The entry's date was corrected from Jan. 20 to Jan. 19, 2024, the day of the Concord rally.