Watch video: Joe Biden stumbles twice boarding Air Force One
Joe Biden has stumbled boarding Air Force One, sparking fresh concerns about the president’s health. Watch video.
US President Joe Biden has stumbled not once but twice on the stairs while boarding Air Force One, despite using a shorter and less challenging staircase.
The 81-year-old commander-in-chief managed to narrowly avoid a complete double tumble as he prepared to set off for Los Angeles on Tuesday.
Footage of the near-miss showed Mr Biden saluting US military personnel at the bottom of the staircase before starting his climb at Andrews Air Force Base.
About halfway up, the president could be seen tripping slightly on a step.
Mr Biden quickly gripped the railing to steady himself but immediately tripped on the following step, too.
Social media were quick to erupt in the wake of the latest near-tumble, with a number of conservatives questioning the 81-year-old’s health.
One person joked that Mr Biden would eventually have to be carried up the stairs in a “stretcher.”
“Biden almost trips (twice) as he boards Air Force One — despite using the short stairs to avoid tripping,” the Republican National Committee research tweeted.
Another posted: “A Secret Service agent is placed at the bottom of the stairs whenever Biden boards or disembarks to prevent this very scenario from happening. Biden is not well!”
VIGOR: Biden almost trips (twice) as he boards Air Force One — despite using the short stairs to avoid tripping pic.twitter.com/CkoLnwLV2q
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 20, 2024
The president’s age has become a focal point of concern among American voters in anticipation of his expected rematch with Republican front runner Donald Trump.
Mr Biden, who turns 82 about two weeks after the November election, has faced an onslaught of criticism by Republicans, Democrats and independents based on his age and whether he is fit to serve another four-year term.
Earlier this month, US First Lady Jill Biden slammed a scathing report that raised alarming questions about her husband’s advanced age.
While special counsel Robert Hur cleared Mr Biden of any charges related to classified documents found at his Delaware home, he also flagged multiple instances of Mr Biden being forgetful.
His report said the US President couldn’t remember the exact or approximate date when his late son Beau Biden died.
Beau Biden died at the age of 46 from brain cancer in 2015 and the US President has frequently told of the anguish he went through during that time.
“I hope you can imagine how it felt to read that attack — not just as Joe’s wife, but as Beau’s mother,” Jill Biden said in an email to her backers, The New York Post reports.
“I don’t know what this Special Counsel was trying to achieve. We should give everyone grace, and I can’t imagine someone would try to use our son’s death to score political points.”
Ms Biden said the death of Beau, an Iraq War veteran who served as the attorney general of Delaware, had left the family shattered.
“If you’ve experienced a loss like that, you know that you don’t measure it in years — you measure it in grief. May 30th is a day forever etched on our hearts. It shattered me, it shattered our family,” Ms Biden said.
‘LEGITIMATE ISSUE’
Hillary Clinton said she believed Mr Biden’s age was a “legitimate” campaign issue.
“I talked to people in the White House all the time, and you know, they know it’s an issue, but as I like to say, ‘look, it’s a legitimate issue,’” Ms Clinton told MSNBC’s Alex Wagner last week.
“It’s a legitimate issue for (ex-President Donald) Trump who’s only three years younger, right? So it’s an issue.”
The former Democrat presidential nominee and secretary of state also said the President should highlight his background as an “experienced” leader.
“I think Biden also should lean into the fact that he’s experienced and that experience is not just in the political arena,” she said. “It’s like, the stuff of, you know, human experience, character, wisdom.
“I think he should be willing to really pull that out … and I think he should kid more about it.”
BIDEN DEFENDS HIS MENTAL STATE
Mr Biden angrily defended himself over claims that he is an “elderly man with a poor memory” – only to then confuse the president of Egypt with the president of Mexico.
In a rare press conference earlier this month, the US President rebuked Mr Hur for his claims about Mr Biden’s “significantly limited” memory during Mr Hur’s investigation of his retention of classified documents from his eight-year stint as Barack Obama’s vice president.
While Mr Hur decided not to press criminal charges, he did so because he said he believed a jury would think the 81-year-old was not capable of a “mental state of wilfulness” and instead “made an innocent mistake”.
Mr Hur said that during a five-hour interview, Mr Biden failed to remember when his vice presidential term started and ended and could not recall “even within several years” when his son Beau died.
Mr Biden, the oldest president in history, hit back by saying: “I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I’m doing.”
“My memory is fine,” he said, telling one reporter during a fiery exchange: “My memory is so bad I let you speak.”
When pressed about his failure to recall when his son died of brain cancer, an emotional Mr Biden said the question he was asked in the interview “wasn’t any of their damn business”.
“I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away,” the President said.
“How in the hell dare he raise that?”
After defending his mental acuity, Mr Biden called an end to the press conference, only to return to answer another question about the war in Gaza in which he referred to the Mexican president instead of the Egyptian president.
Mr Hur’s report concluded that the President “wilfully retained and disclosed classified materials” after his vice presidency, many of which were stored in his garage and basement.
But Mr Biden defiantly rejected that, pointing to other sections of the report which referred to a lack of evidence that suggested his conduct was wilful.
“These assertions are not only misleading, they’re just plain wrong,” he said.
Former president Donald Trump – who is facing criminal charges over his mishandling of classified files – raged that Mr Biden’s case was “100 times different and more severe than mine” and that he “did nothing wrong”.
But Mr Hur said there were “material distinctions” between the two cases.
In his report, he noted that Mr Trump allegedly refused to return classified documents that were requested by authorities and enlisted others to destroy evidence and lie about it.
Mr Biden consented to searches and sat for a voluntary interview, which ran for five hours over two days immediately after Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel.
Many of the files uncovered by authorities – including Mr Biden’s handwritten notebooks – related to his opposition to Mr Obama’s decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, some of which he shared with his ghostwriter who deleted recordings of their interviews when he learned of the probe.
Mr Hur said he believed a jury would consider that Mr Biden “made an innocent mistake, rather than acting wilfully – that is, with the intent to break the law”.
“Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” he said.
The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee retorted: “If you’re too old to be charged for a potential crime, you probably shouldn’t be President.”
Mr Biden acknowledged he should have overseen the transfer of his records after finishing up as the vice president. But he declared: “I did not break the law.”
Originally published as Watch video: Joe Biden stumbles twice boarding Air Force One
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