President Joe Biden unveiled this week a new transportation goal for his administration: to build a railway from the Pacific Ocean across the Indian Ocean.
"We have plans to build a railroad from the Pacific all the way across the Indian Ocean," Biden told a crowd at a League of Conservation Voters event on Wednesday. A railway of that duration, if it began at the Asian coast of the Pacific Ocean and ran all the way across the Indian Ocean into Africa, would be more than 5,000 miles long. Another possible option based on Biden's wording is a train that begins in the Western United States and spans across two oceans and several nations, totaling a length of more than 10,000 miles.
He further announced a project in Angola before stopping himself halfway through the idea.
"We have plans to build in Angola one of the largest solar plants in the world," Biden said. "I can go on, but I’m not. I’m going off-script. I’m going to get in trouble."
There are no published plans for the United States to build a railway over the third-largest ocean in the world. Biden is likely talking about a potential plan to run a railway across the African continent, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.
Biden almost made the same gaffe during a press conference with U.K. prime minister Rishi Sunak last week but corrected himself at the last moment.
"We’re talking about building—and I had my team putting together with other countries as well—to build a railroad from the Pacific Ocean—from the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Indian Ocean," Biden said.
Biden, the oldest president in American history, is prone to misspeaking, a potential problem for the Democrat who faces a majority of his own party not wanting him to run for reelection.