Verbal gaffe or sign of trouble? Mixing up names like Biden and Trump have done is pretty common

Any parent who’s ever called one of their children by the other’s name — or even the family pet’s name — likely could empathize when President Joe Biden mixed up the names of French leaders Macron and Mitterrand.

The human brain has trouble pulling names out of stuffed memory banks on cue. But when are those and other verbal stumbles normal, and when might they be a sign of cognitive trouble?

“When I see somebody make a flub on TV, I’m really not all that concerned,” said well-known aging researcher S. Jay Olshansky of the University of Illinois at Chicago. “What science will tell you about flubs is that they’re perfectly normal, and they are exacerbated by stress for sure.”

Biden, 81, has a decadeslong history of verbal gaffes. But they’re getting new attention after a special counsel this past week decided Biden shouldn’t face criminal charges for his handling of classified documents — while describing him as an old man with trouble remembering dates, even the date his son Beau died.

That prompted a visibly angry Biden to lash out from the White House, saying, “My memory is fine.” As for his son’s 2015 death from brain cancer, “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business,” Biden said.

Biden is not the only candidate making verbal slips. Former President Donald Trump, Biden's likely opponent in the November presidential election, has also. Last month the 77-year-old Trump confused his major opponent for the GOP nomination, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Health experts caution that neither verbal gaffes nor a lawyer's opinions can reveal whether someone is having cognitive trouble. That takes medical testing.

But