Gaffe-prone Biden, 81, mistakenly calls Navalny's widow Yulia YOLANDA after meeting - before shuffling back to his SUV as calls mount for elderly president to step down

President Joe Biden suffered another public gaffe on Thursday, misnaming Alexei Navalny's widow Yulia as 'Yolanda' in a brief meeting with the press in Los Angeles.

The president spoke privately with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya in a suite at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco following Alexei's death. 

'This morning I had the honor of meeting Alexei Navalny's wife and daughter,' he said in a parking garage. 'The one that was made clear to me is that Yolanda's gonna, she's gonna continue to fight.'

Biden, at 81, the oldest president in American history, then shuffled back to his SUV. 

The meeting with the Navalny family came hours after Biden publicly called Putin a 'crazy S.O.B.' in the wake of Navalny's death at the age of 47. 

President Joe Biden suffered another public gaffe on Thursday, misnaming Alexei Navalny 's widow Yulia as 'Yolanda' in a brief meeting with the press in San Francisco

The president said: 'He (Navalny) was a man of incredible courage. It's amazing how his wife and daughter are emulating that.

'We'll be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow.

The President also wrote on X: 'Today, I met with Yulia and Dasha Navalnaya – Aleksei Navalny's loved ones – to express my condolences for their devastating loss.

'Aleksei's legacy of courage will live on in Yulia and Dasha and the countless people across Russia fighting for democracy and human rights.' 

Pundits from all across the political spectrum have been saying Biden should step down and allow a younger candidate to run, especially in the wake of the DoJ report that called him 'a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.'

Biden met the Navalnayas as Navalny's mother Lyudmila Navalnaya revealed she had been taken to a secret morgue to see her son's body.

She demanded that Kremlin officials give back 'my son's body immediately' after investigators tried 'blackmailing' her into holding a 'secret' burial.

President Joe Biden met with Alexei Navalny 's widow and daughter in California and promised major new sanctions against Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime

The president hugs Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya in San Francisco 

Yulia Navalnaya, wife of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny

Biden called Putin an 'S.O.B.' in a campaign speech to a small group of supporters on Wednesday night.

He also condemned his predecessor Donald Trump for comparing his legal woes with Navalny's plight. 

Biden is planning to announce a fresh round of sanctions on Friday, as fears grow that Putin will put a nuclear weapon into space.

A vast majority of American voters – 86 percent – say President Joe Biden, 81, is too old for another term in office, according to a new poll.

Meanwhile, 62 percent of respondents in the ABC News/Ipsos poll say that former President Donald Trump, 77, is also too old for another White House term.

Fifty-nine percent of respondents say that both top 2024 competitors are too old while 27 percent think only the current president is elderly enough to be taken out of consideration. 

In a Substack post on Monday, FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver concluded that Biden 'should stand down if he wasn't going to be able to run a normal reelection campaign.'

'If you'd asked me a year ago, I would have told you that Joe Biden was a reasonably clear favorite in the event of a rematch against Donald Trump,' he wrote in his Silver Bulletin post.

President Joe Biden is no longer the 'clear favorite' to win the presidential race in 2024, according to top pollster Nate Silver

FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver (pictured) published a lengthy post Monday arguing why Biden is losing any advantage he had over Trump a year ago in the race for the White House

Now, Silver argues, 'it's time for the White House to put up or shut up.' 

Biden, 81, is on track for a rematch with former President Donald Trump, 77, in 2024 with no real competitors in the Democratic primary.

If asked in February 2023, Silver claims that he would have said Biden was the favorite to win against Trump by a 65:35 margin. But the president's conduct over the last year of campaigning coupled with his age and fitness for office has changed his mind.

Things like participating in the pre-Super Bowl interview are important to running a presidential campaign, Silver noted – which is something Biden opted not to do this month after also skipping the tradition last year.

'This really isn't too much to ask,' Silver argued. 'These are the sorts of interviews that every other recent president has done.'

Recent polling shows Trump continuing to close the gap with Biden and even pulling way past him in some hypothetical general election match-ups.

Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history. He broke Trump's record by eight years when entering office at the age of 78 in January 2021.

If elected for a second term, Biden would be 82 at the time of inauguration.

US President Joe Biden speaks to the press in the parking garage of the Fairmont Hotel in Los Angeles, California, on February 22, 2024

US President Joe Biden next to his vehicle 'The Beast' as he speaks to the press in the parking garage of the Fairmont Hotel in Los Angeles, California, on February 22, 2024

When taking into consideration only their own party's preferences, 73 percent of Democrats think Biden is too old and only 35 percent of Republicans think that about Trump.

Ninety-one percent of independents say Biden is too old and 71 percent of this voting block say the same about the former president.

It comes after the DOJ released a report revealing his assessment that Biden has 'poor memory' and 'diminished facilities' and would therefore not recommend charges in the classified documents case, so he wouldn't appear before a jury the same way he did before Special Counsel Robert Hur.