In a bitter and fraught US election, a rare moment of jollity broke through when video of Joe Biden joking with a Trump supporter about his age and trying on his Trump 2024 hat went viral.
At an event on Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Biden even joked with the man that he could not remember his own name.
In a video of the exchange that went viral online, Biden is seen exchanging wisecracks with the man at an event on Wednesday in Pennsylvania.
Then, when trying on the man’s Trump hat, Biden warned the crowd against eating “cats and dogs” in reference to debunked claims made by Trump during the debate on Tuesday that immigrants were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
The clip of the interaction shows the man wearing the Trump 2024 hat, approaching the president, and Biden offering him his own presidential seal cap to wear.
“You remember your name?” the man sarcastically asks Biden, to which the president jokingly responds: “I don’t remember my name … I’m slow.”
The man proceeded to call the president an “old fart”.
“Yeah, I know man, I’m an old guy … you would know about that,” Biden responded.
“He reminds me of the guys I grew up with,” Biden states to the crowd, while autographing the presidential hat for the man.
“I need that hat,” Biden jokingly says, referring to the Trump hat, to which people in the crowd shout: “Put it on!”
Biden proceeded to put the Trump 2024 hat on, and was greeted with cheers in the room.
“I’m proud of you now,” the man is seen saying.
“Remember, no eating dogs and cats,” Biden jokes.
NEW: Full exchange of the incident leading up to Joe Biden putting on a Trump 2024 hat.
Biden: “Sure, I’ll autograph [a hat].”
Man: “You remember your name?”
Biden: “I don’t remember my name… I’m slow.”
Man: “You’re an old fart.”
Biden: “Yeah, I’m an old guy… You would… pic.twitter.com/yQcCXmtzIZ
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/status/1834057076005634522?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The exchange occurred during Biden’s visit on Wednesday to a fire station in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the site of the Flight 93 crash on 11 September 2001, where he delivered remarks and spoke with some first responders on the 23rd anniversary of 9/11.
The video of the exchange between Biden and the man in the Trump hat quickly went viral online on Wednesday, with an X account associated with Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign posting a photo of Biden wearing the hat with the caption: “Thanks for the support, Joe!”.
The senior Trump campaign adviser Chris LaCivita also posted a photo of Biden in the hat, with the caption: “What’s Happening?”
Another user wrote: “Biden wearing a Trump hat wasn’t on my bingo card.”
A spokesperson for the White House said that the president tried on the hat in a gesture of unity and bipartisanship.
“At the Shanksville Fire Station, POTUS spoke about the country’s bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that” said the White House senior deputy press secretary, Andrew Bates. “As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it.”
Some X users celebrated Biden’s move, calling it “nice” to see “people from opposing parties joke around instead of attack each other”.
