President Joe Biden appeared confused about whether to sit or stand during a ceremony in Normandy, France, on Thursday that commemorated the 80th anniversary of the June 6, 1944 D-Day landings.
Video of the moment showed Biden hovering near a chair and oscillating for several seconds between standing upright and leaning over to sit down. The moment played out as a master of ceremonies announced the arrival of U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the ceremony.
The footage of the awkward display met with some mockery online.
“He trying to pet his imaginary Dog?” one social media user wrote, in response to an X post of the footage.
“He doesn’t know where he is or why he is there,” wrote another.
Another social media user argued that Biden was simply trying to find his seat and that the broader context shows him sitting down mere moments before others at the ceremony. Still, with the broader context, social media users argued that his faltering still appeared odd and still suggests a mental or physical decline.
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The incident played out just two days after The Wall Street Journal published an article based on interviews on and off the record with 45 different lawmakers and administration staff, who described Biden’s declining mental acuity behind the scenes.
The Wall Street Journal article noted that Democrats have also called former President Donald Trump’s mental fitness into question over the years and that both 2024 candidates have had public slip-ups and off-key moments.
Biden’s defenders in The Wall Street Journal’s article touted his acuity behind the scenes, despite some awkward public displays. They also pointed to policy wins, such as Democrats overcoming Republican opposition to raising the debt ceiling and passing new rounds of aid for Ukraine in the past few months, as a sign that the Biden administration was getting results despite questions about the sitting president’s personal mental acuity.
