President Joe Biden sported a red Trump 2024 cap on Wednesday, a gesture the White House described as a show of “unity” on the September 11 anniversary.
The 81-year-old president was dared to don the hat by a Trump supporting heckler while attending events at the Pennsylvania site where Flight 93 went down.
Biden showed up at a local firehouse with beer and pizza after a wreath-laying ceremony at the memorial, commemorating the brave passengers who forced the plane to crash in the rural area instead of its original target, the Pentagon.
While hanging out with attendees, Biden swapped one of his hats for a Trump supporter’s red Trump campaign cap.
In a TikTok video, Biden handed a man, who was taunting him over his age, a hat with the presidential seal.
When the man asked Biden to sign it and if he remembered his name, Biden quipped, “I don’t remember my name. I’m slow.”
“You’re an old fart,” the heckler said, to which Biden conceded, “I’m an old guy.”
“You’re an old fart, right?” the man added, refusing to drop the gag.
“I know you would know about that,” Biden retorted to the man, who was clearly going bald.
“He reminds me of the guys I grew up with,” Biden told the crowd as he signed the presidential hat. “There was always one in the neighborhood.”
When the president asked the Trump supporter for his red hat, the man replied, “You want my autograph?”
“Hell no,” Biden shot back, then astonishingly put the “Trump 2024” hat over the blue cap he was already wearing.
“I’m proud of you now, you old fart,” the heckler, who was at that point wearing the signed hat told Biden.
“Just remember, no eating dogs and cats,” Biden quipped in reference to a remark Trump made at the Tuesday night presidential debate.
“They’re eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” the former president said about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio.
The Trump War Room X account was quick to capitalize on Biden’s odd move.
“Kamala did so bad in last night’s debate, Joe Biden just put on a Trump hat,” the account posted on X, along with footage that was boomeranged so Biden was putting on the hat instead of taking it off.
The White House explained away Biden’s choice to accessorize with a Trump hat as an attempt to promote 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,” White House press secretary Andrew Bates tweeted.
“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.”
At the same event, Biden was apparently so into the “country’s bipartisan unity,” he took a photo with a group of children wearing Trump shirts.
Conservative influencer Benny Johnson shared an image of some of the children wearing shirts with Trump’s face, including a red one featuring the 45th president donning aviators with the phrase “I’ll be back” written on it.
