Joe Biden climbed the stairs of Air Force One again – and lost. By The American Tribune’s count, this marks at least the 5th time that the 80-year-old Commander-in-Chief has stumbled while boarding.
The latest embarrassment occurred as Biden departed from a quick stop to Selma, Alabama commemorating the historic city’s Bloody Sunday march in 1965. The President has made several international and domestic trips since the infamous Ohio train derailment; he has been to Europe as well as Virginia Beach and now Selma without a stop in East Palestine yet.
Take a look as Biden tries walking and then inserts the trademark hop-and-run in the immediate aftermath of the stumble.
https://twitter.com/RNCResearch/status/1632564010506698753?s=20
Biden most recently got captured on camera losing to the stairs while departing from Poland in late February. It is unclear why he continues to go up these stairs alone. After all, it doesn’t seem like it would take much for him to fall backward rather than forward and really face some dire consequences. Even falling forward carries a lot of risks.
Here was Biden trying to leave Warsaw, Poland without incident:
https://twitter.com/TheInsiderPaper/status/1628436874812395532?s=20
In the first and most iconic trips, Joe Biden had barely been in office for two months when he stumbled climbing the steps to Air Force One in March of 2021. In this now-viral clip that produced endless mocking memes, Biden tripped, regained composure, and then tripped again as no doubt his handlers were panicked he might never make it to the top.
Here’s the fall that set the stage for all the others:
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1372935931204927491?s=20
After this one happened, the White House was in full recovery mode. White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield tweeted that he was fine and didn’t even require medical attention. I guess we will have to take their word on it.
“I know folks have seen that President Biden slipped on his way up the stairs to AF1, but I’m happy to report that he is just fine and did not even require any attention from the medical team who travels with him. Nothing more than a misstep on the stairs,” Bedingfield tweeted shortly after the famous falls.
In 2021, the President took other tumbles. Here was the New York Post recapping the eventful first year of Biden’s presidency:
This is at least the third time the president has taken a fall while trying to board Air Force One. In March 2021, Biden stumbled twice before hitting the deck while trying to depart for Georgia. At the time, then-White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre blamed an ill-timed gust of wind for the presidential pratfall.
In May of last year, Biden appeared to briefly lose his balance as he walked up the Air Force One steps at Andrews Air Force Base en route to Illinois. On that occasion, the commander-in-chief caught himself in time to prevent a tumble and gripped the handrail tightly with his right hand as he walked to the plane.
The following month, the president staggered again while mounting the steps before flying to Los Angeles to attend the Summit of the Americas — and record an interview with “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”
And of course, it isn’t just walking that poses a problem. Joe Biden famously fell off his bike in what became known even on Google Maps at Brandon Falls.
“The spot was at or near the point where Biden took a tumble when stopping to chat with pedestrians – which the president later chalked up to getting his foot caught in a bike pedal’s toe clip,” Fox News wrote in 2022.
“Before it was taken down, the new coastal “tourist attraction” had roughly a 4.9 out of 5-point rating and several politically charged “reviews” lampooning the president and his administration,” they added.
Featured image: Screen shot from embedded Twitter video.
"*" indicates required fields