President Joe Biden landed himself in the middle of another controversy after he appeared to forget the name of an important member of his cabinet. 

Biden, who is under pressure to drop out of the 2024 race, had a memory lapse during an interview with Black Entertainment Television. The president referred to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as “a Black man” after failing to recall Austin’s name. 

“Look at the heat I’m getting because I named, a, uh, the, uh, secretary of defense, a black man—I named Ketanji Brown, I mean,  because of the people I’ve named. It’s about making clear that American history is black history,” Biden said in the interview. 

The president’s latest gaffe comes as reports are emerging that he could drop out of the 2024 presidential race as early as this weekend. 

Reports also showed that former President Barack Obama secretly expressed doubts about President Biden’s chances. According to The Washington Post, Obama believes Biden’s chance of winning in November is slim. The former president, however, insists Biden must make the decision to drop out of the election on his own. 

Biden’s campaign reportedly expressed fears that Obama was behind the mounting campaign to have the president withdraw from the race. 

Senate Majority Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate hopeful Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) have all urged the president to bow out of the race. House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is also reportedly pushing to withdraw from the race. 

A longtime former Senate leadership aide told Daily Mail that Pelosi, not Obama, is driving the pressure campaign against Biden. The source insisted that Schiff would never have come out publicly against Biden if he did not have the former speaker’s blessing.

According to The Red Archives, Schiff is the most influential Democrat publicly urging the president to drop out. Schiff revealed he has “serious concerns about whether the president can defeat Donald Trump in November.” 

“While the choice to withdraw from the campaign is President Biden’s alone, I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,’ Schiff said.