(Headline USA) White House staffers admitted this week that President Joe Biden has to use lower stairs to board Air Force One to avoid tripping or falling.
Biden has been seen struggling to board the plane on a number of occasions, including last week when he tripped walking up the lower, shorter staircase at the bottom of the plane.
The reason Biden has been using the lower staircase is to help the president avoid such blunders, two White House staffers told Politico.
The Biden advisers “privately acknowledged an intentional shift to steer the 80-year-old president to the lower stairs more often to make his travel easier and limit the possibility for missteps,” according to the outlet.
That’s also why Biden has been wearing sneakers instead of dress shoes more recently, the report said.
“The sneakers are another concession to comfort necessitated by age,” Politico reported. “One person close to the president said Biden used to always resist wearing anything other than dress shoes, believing that any other footwear look was unpresidential, but he has eased up on that stance in recent months.”
The aides said this was just part of a larger effort by the White House to “limit situations where any signs of physical frailty might be on heightened display.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to elaborate on the change and whether the president was having “mobility problems” when asked about the report.
“I don’t have any decision process to walk through,” she said.
“I’m sure there’s a protocol that’s used for the—for Air Force One,” she continued. “I just don’t have one.”
Polls show that a majority of voters, including Democrats, are concerned about Biden’s age. Democratic leadership, however, has tried to downplay these concerns.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., for example, who is three years older than Biden, joked this week that he is still “a kid.”
“I think the president should embrace his age, his experience, the knowledge that he brings to the job,” she said on Wednesday.
“Age is a relative thing—it is,” she continued. “He’s younger than I am, so he’s a kid to me, as well.”
