Joe Biden looked in a good mood after taking a tumble at the Air Force Academy graduation on Tuesday.
“I’m sandbagged!” Mr. Biden yelled amid the uproar at the White House in his first comments on the incident. He also grinned and laughed at himself for tripping before walking past the reporter.
The president fell on stage towards the end of the graduation ceremony when he appeared to trip over a sandbag. He was picked up by security guards on stage.
Republicans seized on footage in the fall to suggest Mr. Biden, the oldest president in U.S. history at 80, was unfit for the post to run for re-election in 2024.
Some Democrats expressed concern that Mr. Biden’s perceived vulnerability could become an electoral burden, although others, including Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff Ron Klein, denounced “a neurotic woman.”
“@POTUS stood on stage for almost 2 hours shaking hands with graduates,” Mr. Klein tweeted. “He tripped over a sandbag while greeting some guests. Calm down, nervous Nellys.”
While Mr Biden’s age has been an issue during his presidency, his most likely opponent in the general election, former President Donald Trump, is not young either.
During Mr. Trump’s first term in office, observers have also raised questions about his fitness. In the wake of Mr. Biden’s fall, the anti-Trump political group The Lincoln Project tweeted several compilations of Mr. Trump’s frailty.
On Thursday, Mr. Trump weighed in on Mr. Biden’s blunder in the Iowa campaign, saying he hoped Mr. Biden “wasn’t hurt” and that the blunder was “not inspiring.”
“You have to be careful because you don’t want that, even if you have to be careful going down the slope,” Mr. Trump said in his comments Report go through hill.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s main rival for the Republican nomination, is less kind reply to news.
“We hope and wish Joe Biden a speedy recovery from any harm he may suffer, but we also wish the United States of America a speedy recovery from the harm Joe Biden and his policies have caused,” he said in New Hampshire.
