Trump mistakes Armenia for Albania for the third time at UK press conference
US President Donald Trump on September 18 mistakenly referred to Armenia as Albania while claiming to have resolved a conflict with Azerbaijan that never involved the Balkan nation.
The gaffe, at least the third such error, occurred during a press conference in England as Trump touted his record as a peacemaker.
In reality, it was Armenia that formally agreed to a peace deal with Azerbaijan at the White House last month, ending decades of tension in the South Caucasus region.
The US president also struggled with the pronunciation of Azerbaijan, giving a lengthy pause before coming out with “Aber … baijan”.
“To think that we settled Aber … baidan and Albania as an example it was going on for years it was never going to be settled,” Trump told a televised press conference, appearing to confuse Armenia with Albania.
“If you remember, the prime minister and the presidents, they were there for many years,” he continued, before recounting the historic peace summit between Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the White House on August 8.
“They said … when they were in my office, we settled. And they started off at both sides of the Oval Office. So far away. I didn’t know you could be so far away. And as we were together for an hour, they kept getting closer, closer. And by the time we finished, we all hugged each other.”
Trump has previously made similar errors concerning the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Just days ago, he also told Fox News he had stopped a war between “Azerbaijan and Albania”.
In August, during an appearance on conservative talk show The Mark Levin Show, he stumbled over the pronunciation again: “For the Aberbaijan – that was a big one going on for 34, 35 years, er Albania, I mean, think of that, going on for years.”
Trump has repeatedly listed his foreign policy triumphs in recent months, while the White House has sought to present him as the “President of Peace”, leading to speculation he is angling for a Nobel Peace Prize.
As well as the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, he has also more than once detailed other conflicts he claims to have resolved including those between India and Pakistan, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Serbia and Kosovo and Egypt and Ethiopia.
