CNN  — 

Sen. Rand Paul was supposed to be on stage at Monday night’s Voters First Forum in New Hampshire. But the vote on his bill to defund Planned Parenthood made it impossible to get to the event in time.

So instead, Paul and Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz found themselves in a television studio in Washington, beamed in by satellite to appear with 11 other GOP candidates at St. Anselm.

The Kentucky senator decided to open his first answer by explaining their long-distance appearance. But Paul, just off the Senate floor, had a little trouble keeping straight what effort he had just tried to lead.

“First of all, thanks for letting us appear remotely. I’ve been leading the fight for the last two weeks to defund Obamacare. And I was lucky enough to get a vote on that this evening,” he said, appearing on a monitor in the room and before New Hampshire audience.

Realizing his mistake, he took to Twitter minutes later to clean it up.

“Oops, I obviously meant I’ve been spending the last few weeks fighting to defund Planned Parenthood but I’m happy to defund Obamacare too,” he tweeted.