President Joe Biden briefly wore one of former President Donald Trump’s red MAGA hats in a gesture the White House said was to show “bipartisan unity.”
Biden, Trump and Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris attended multiple Sept. 11 memorial ceremonies on Wednesday, a day after Trump and Harris first met on the debate stage.
Speaking to firefighters in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed, Biden was briefly seen wearing a bright red Trump cap.
The moment sparked an eruption of Trump supporters and MAGA social media accounts thanking the 81-year-old commander in chief.
Biden’s decision came 24 hours after he raised eyebrows by saying he would “do 9/11” as he left the White House for New York on Tuesday night.
President Joe Biden briefly wore one of former President Donald Trump’s red MAGA hats in a gesture the White House said was to show “bipartisan unity.”
“At the Shanksville Firehouse, President Joe Biden spoke about the country’s bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we need to get back to that,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates posted on X. “As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter, who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should wear his Trump hat.”
“He used it briefly,” Bates added.
By the time Bates posted his message, Trump supporters were already insisting that Biden, 81, was so “senile” that he didn’t realize what the cap said.
“Attendees told me that Joe Biden looked totally senile at the event, and even wore a red TRUMP 2024 hat while (Harris) was in the room,” wrote Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and top Trump ally. “One attendee asked Biden, ‘Do you even know your name?'” she added, echoing an attack on the president that Trump launched Tuesday night on the debate stage.
Trump War Room account X shared a video of Biden putting on the hat with the caption: ‘Kamala did so poorly at last night’s debate that Joe Biden just put on a Trump hat.’
The group of journalists following the president was not invited into the room as Biden and Harris were meeting with family members affected by the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001.
Pennsylvania is the must-win state for the 2024 election, and with the trip to Shanksville, Harris was entering Trump territory.
Somerset County as a whole voted for Trump over Biden by 78 percent to 21 percent.
Signs of support for the Republican candidate were visible from the route of Harris’s motorcade.
Another angle of the video shows the 81-year-old commander in chief wearing the signature red hat in a gesture of “bipartisan unity.”
Biden told the crowd at the firehouse that America needed to return to the unity shown after the attacks that killed 2,977 people.
One man attending the ceremony also wore a vulgar anti-Harris T-shirt.
Harris is expected to return to western Pennsylvania on Friday with a campaign stop in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, located in nearby Cambria County.
Cambria County represents one of the most dramatic swings from Democrats to Republicans in the country.
It was represented for years by the late Democratic Rep. John Murtha.
In 2008, President Barack Obama won the county by a hair: 50 percent to Sen. John McCain’s 48 percent.
During the 2020 election, the county went 68 percent for Trump and 31 percent for Biden.
Trump landed at Johnstown Airport shortly after Biden and Harris visited Shanksville.
The former president was also present alongside Biden and Harris in New York City at a ceremony at Ground Zero.
