The moment Biden was referring to came during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland over the weekend when Trump was praising his wife and then, as the audience applauded, said, “Oh, look at that, Mercedes – that’s pretty good”.

Loading

Meyers played that clip before Biden came out on the show, mocking Trump for seeming to have forgotten Melania Trump’s name. But Trump was addressing Mercedes Schlapp, a former White House adviser whose husband, Matt Schlapp, the chair of the American Conservative Union, hosts the conference, according to the former president’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung. “The clips were taken out of context by disingenuous people,” Cheung said.

Still, Trump has in the past misspelled Melania’s name on Twitter as “Melanie”. And during a deposition in the defamation case brought by E. Jean Carroll, Trump mistakenly identified a picture of Carroll as Marla Maples, his second wife. A jury found that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1990s, and a separate jury ordered him to pay $US83.3 million for defaming her.

Biden joined Meyers to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the late-night show, a decade after appearing on the program’s debut episode in 2014 when he was vice president. It was Biden’s fourth appearance on a late-night talk show since becoming president. He was a guest of Jimmy Fallon in 2021, of Jimmy Kimmel in 2022 and on The Daily Show in 2023.

The audience is important for Biden, who relied on strong support among younger voters to defeat Trump in 2020 and needs them again despite surveys showing disenchantment among that generation. But he slipped when asked about his 2024 agenda. “The 2020 agenda is to finish the job,” he said.

Meyers asked the president about the “Dark Brandon” meme that his younger aides have promoted online, a laser-eyed version of the president intended to make him seem cool and hip. Asked if he enjoys the meme, Biden quipped, “No, I resent the hell out of it”, and then put on Ray-Ban sunglasses.

When Meyers noted that many on the political right have embraced a bizarre conspiracy theory that he and Taylor Swift “are working in cahoots,” Biden playfully snapped: “Where are you getting this information? It’s classified. That’s classified information.”

“But,” he quickly added, “I will tell you she endorsed me in 2020.”