President Joe Biden fell off his bike during a ride near his Rehoboth Beach home in Delaware on Saturday, as he and his wife celebrated their 45th wedding anniversary.
Video footage that went viral online showed Biden with his wife, Jill – surrounded by Secret Service agents – riding down a road near their home, as press and other people waited to greet him at Cape Henlopen State Park with their phones and cameras out.
Biden fell after he had trouble removing his shoes from the bikes’ pedals.
That didn’t stop the Biden though from posing for photographs and engaging in a lively discussion with the crowd before getting back on the bike and speeding off.
Secret Service members quickly helped Biden get back up after his tumble.
“I’m good,” Biden, 79, said after a Secret Service agent helped him up. As he walked towards a member of the crowd, the group clapped and cheered for the president as he continued to greet them.
Former President Donald Trump expressed sympathy for Biden after the fall, in a rare moment of goodwill.
“I hope he has recovered because, as you know, he fell off his bicycle today,” said Trump while speaking at his American Freedom Tour in Memphis, Tennessee, on Saturday.
“No, I’m serious. I hope he’s okay. He fell off a bicycle,” said Trump, who added: “I make this pledge to you today: I will never ever ride a bicycle.”
“But no, we do hope that Biden’s okay because that was a hard fall, that was scary. That was a hard. Did anybody see it? Well, we wish him well in that respect,” said Trump.
Biden isn’t the first president to have a bicycle mishap. George W. Bush collided with a police officer in Scotland in 2005 and a year earlier fell off his bike at his ranch in Texas.
The pilot episode of “The West Wing” centers around the White House’s response to the political drama’s fictitious President Jed Bartlet, portrayed by Martin Sheen, awkwardly crashing his into a cypress tree off-camera, announced to staff through a pager message that said, “POTUS in a bicycle accident.”
In a blunder even bigger than Aaron Sorkin could ever conceive, Biden, an avid bike rider who often goes for rides with the First Lady while at their home in Rehoboth Beach, managed to fall off his bicycle while literally standing still.