President Biden joked to a factory worker in Colorado on Wednesday that a device he was carrying looked like the so-called “nuclear football” that holds the “codes to blow up the world”. 

“My marine carries that. It has the codes to blow up the world,” Mr Biden told a worker named Nick during a visit to a wind tower manufacturer. 

The Presidential Emergency Satchel, or nuclear football, holds the codes the president would use to authenticate an order to launch nuclear missiles should he or she not be at the White House. 

During his visit to Colorado, Mr Biden visited CS Wind, a manufacturing company headquartered in South Korea. In the president’s address to the company, Mr Biden called Yoon Suk Yeol, the South Korean president, “Mr Moon”, apparently mixing him up with Mr Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jai-in.

“I am friends with your leader, Mr Moon, you know,” Mr Biden said.