Following years of documented examples of President Joe Biden struggling to safely board Air Force One without tripping on the stairs, the 80-year-old commander-in-chief has switched to a shorter set of stairs that make it less likely for him to trip.
Video footage of the president using the plane’s shorter staircase has emerged in recent weeks, though the White House has neither officially announced the change or acknowledged that they are doing anything differently.
Since entering the White House in January, 2021, the president was regularly seen boarding Air Force One via the front of the plane. To enter the plane through its front door, the president climbed a tall staircase with 26 steps. During recent trips to London, Helsinki, and Vilnius, however, the president consistently used a much shorter set of stairs that leads to the belly of the aircraft.
Importantly, President Joe Biden is not the only president to have used the shorter flight of stairs – however, given that the stairs lead to the belly of the plane, they are typically only used during adverse weather conditions.
Something Is Wrong: President Biden and Mobility Problems
When pressed by Bloomberg’s Justin Sink about the move, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to answer whether the decision was made with President Biden’s “mobility problems” in mind.
“I don’t have any decision process to walk through,” Jean-Pierre said in the White House briefing room. “I’m sure there’s a protocol that’s used for the, for Air Force One. I just don’t have one.”
White House officials said that the decision was not made specifically with Biden’s mobility in mind, with a Biden administration official telling Politico that a “series of factors” go into the logistical decision-making on the matter.
Among those factors are “weather, what kind of airport we’re landing at and whether there is a formal greeting planned for the tarmac where we expect that press will want an official photo at the bottom of the tall stairs.”
Did It Solve the Problem?
If the change was made to prevent the president from falling while boarding Air Force One, then the plan has already failed.
While boarding the plane for a flight from Helsinki, Finland, back to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, the president was seen stumbling as he climbed just 14 steps.
The president’s brief stumble made international headlines, with Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper noting that the “octogenarian president recovered, clenching to the handrail and recouping his composure to continue the rest of the way up.”
After his brief stumble, the president saved face when he stood at the top of the stairs, turned and waved to the crowd.
Jack Buckby is 19FortyFive’s Breaking News Editor. He is a British author, counter-extremism researcher, and journalist based in New York. Reporting on the U.K., Europe, and the U.S., he works to analyze and understand left-wing and right-wing radicalization, and reports on Western governments’ approaches to the pressing issues of today. His books and research papers explore these themes and propose pragmatic solutions to our increasingly polarized society.
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