Marco Rubio hurries to drag Donald Trump behind Joe Biden to hide his public boo-boo, unaware that he turned White House into a liar

Marco Rubio probably thought he was helping when he excused Trump’s infamous Iceland stumble by putting Biden on the spotlight. Instead, he quietly revealed that Karoline Leavitt had been selling fiction. 

During his appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Jan. 21, 2026, Trump repeatedly referred to Iceland while clearly discussing Greenland. The mix-up wasn’t subtle. He accidentally threatened tariffs and floated the territorial acquisition of the Nordic nation. Reportedly, he said “Iceland” at least four times, in contexts that made no geographic sense (via Snopes).

Clips of Trump’s embarrassing stumble immediately spread across the media. You know the headlines, the world’s strongest president confused two entirely different countries in front of world leaders. And this was not a throwaway rally line. It was a prepared address at Davos, the venue where precision is supposed to be the bare minimum.

Karoline Leavitt outright denied Trump’s mix-up

Predictably, the White House response came quickly and aggressively. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt flatly denied that Trump had confused the two places at all. She insisted his remarks referred to Greenland metaphorically as “a piece of ice.” 

“No he didn’t, … His written remarks referred to Greenland as a ‘piece of ice’ because that’s what it is. You’re the only one mixing anything up here.”

Leavitt even blamed reporters for misunderstanding him, and treated the entire episode as a media hallucination rather than a presidential error. In short: Trump didn’t mess up. Everyone else did. But her justification only held until Jan. 28, when Marco Rubio flatly suggested she was lying. 

Marco Rubio admitted under oath that Trump mistook Iceland for Greenland

While testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rubio was asked directly about the incident. But he didn’t repeat Leavitt’s denial. Instead, he acknowledged the obvious: Trump meant to say Greenland. He called it a “verbal stumble,” shrugged it off, and pivoted to a familiar Republican shield, Joe Biden.

“Yeah, he meant to say Greenland, but I think we’re all familiar with presidents who have verbal stumbles. We’ve had presidents like that before. Some made a lot more than this one.” 

Rubio told senators that presidents have verbal slips and that Americans have “seen presidents like that before,” referring to Biden. The defense was meant to normalize Trump’s error by burying it in a broader both-sides fog. But in doing so, Rubio undercut the White House’s official position.

Because if Trump “meant to say Greenland,” then Leavitt’s public insistence that he made no mistake collapses entirely. Rubio didn’t just excuse Trump, he contradicted his own press secretary under oath. Either Trump misspoke, or Leavitt knowingly misled reporters. Both cannot be true, but the irony remains thick in either case. 

For years, Republicans weaponized every Biden verbal slip as evidence of cognitive decline, national danger, and unfitness for office. Now Rubio is asking the public to suddenly accept verbal confusion as normal presidential wear-and-tear. And oh, just don’t notice that the White House is still pretending it never happened.

The ordeal exposes the administration’s scrutinized pattern of refusing accountability. When Trump stumbles, their first response isn’t correction, it’s denial. But when denial fails, the fallback is deflection. Biden becomes the excuse and the media becomes the villain.