Easter bunny waves Joe Biden away from guests

Giant Easter bunny interrupts Joe Biden as he discusses foreign policy with guests, prompting claims the rabbit was preventing another presidential gaffe.

The Easter bunny waves Joe Biden away from guests during the annual Easter egg roll. Picture: AFP.

A giant Easter bunny has interrupted Joe Biden at the White House as he began to discuss foreign policy with guests, prompting accusations the president’s minders had resorted to unorthodox measures to limit the gaffe-prone president’s off the cuff remarks.

At the first annual White House Easter Egg Roll since the pandemic on Monday (Tuesday AEST) Mr Biden began to talk about Afghanistan and Pakistan on the south lawn to a journalist before being cut off by a frantically waiving rabbit, who ushered the startled president away.

Joe Biden quickly interrupted by the Easter Bunny after he starts to comment on #Afghanistan and #Pakistan at the White House #EasterEggRoll 🐰 pic.twitter.com/xLkuyyudDj

— Thomas C. Dillon (@craigtdillon) April 18, 2022

“Pakistan should not and Afghanistan should be — people should be free,” Mr Biden started to say, before a bunny rushed to his side.

“The Easter bunny appears to direct Joe Biden away from Afghanistan question at White House event,” the Independent, a British newspaper, tweeted.

Communications experts and political strategists, possibly ironically, speculated the person dressed as a rabbit, a White House tradition at Easter, had been sent deliberately to limit comments on two sensitive foreign policy questions.

The Easter Bunny intervenes when Biden walks off to talk to people. pic.twitter.com/T7ABNiwQD0

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 18, 2022

The US controversially withdrew from Afghanistan in August last year and former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan earlier this month accused the US, which has denied the allegation, of seeking to oust him.

“Why is the Easter bunny directing the President of the United States?” Abigail Marone, press secretary for Republican senator Josh Hawley, added, in one of a blizzard of tweets and social media posts suggesting the gesticulating rabbit was no accident.

White House press assistant Angela Perez a little later posted a behind the scenes photo of an Easter bunny “hopping on a zoom call”, stoking speculation about the actual chain of command further.

Spotted another Easter Bunny…headed to the briefing room? pic.twitter.com/dSOPeCqDxI

— Angela Perez (@ADCPerez46) April 18, 2022

Sean Spicer, former press secretary for Donald Trump, dressed up as the Easter bunny at the 2008 Egg Roll when he was a junior press officer in the Bush administration.

The leporine intervention followed a series of recent verbal slips by the president, including suggesting US troops would go to Ukraine, that the US would respond “in kind” to Russia’s use of chemical weapons, and raising the possibility the US wanted “regime change” in Moscow.

Questions about Mr Biden’s cognitive ability have proliferated in recent months alongside a slew of poor polls for the president and the Democrat party seven months out from critical midterm Congressional elections.

The president’s approval rating fell to 33 per cent, including to 26 per cent among Hispanic voters, who typically support the Democrats, in a highly regarded Quinnipiac poll published this week, which was Mr Biden’s lowest level yet.

Support for the president, who will turn 80 in November, also collapsed among another group of traditional supporters – voters born after 1980, so-called ‘Millennials’ and Generation Z – from 60 per cent a year ago to around 40 per cent, according to a Gallup poll published on Thursday.

“At this point in his presidency, Donald Trump’s numbers, actually his average approval rating is one point higher than Joe Biden’s,” said CNN’s polling expert Harry Enten on Friday, suggesting a saving grace of Mr Biden’s deteriorating standing – that it was still better than Mr Trump’s – was crumbling.

Former president Donald Trump attracted criticism of his own for two unusual Easter messages over the holiday period, which condemned “radical left maniacs” for “doing everything possible to destroy our Country” and slammed New York’s “racist Attorney-General Letitia James”, who has targeted Mr Trump’s financial affairs.

Meanwhile, his eldest son, Donald Trump Junior, prompted a backlash for posting a picture of Easter bunnies with machine guns.