President Joe Biden, 80, tripped and fell as he was handing out diplomas at the Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado on Thursday.
The president was helped up by those around him within a few seconds.
“He’s fine. There was a sandbag on stage while he was shaking hands,” tweeted White House communications director Ben LaBolt. Biden appeared to point to the sandbag after he was back on his feet.
The president would go on to continue greeting attendees unassisted.
Falls are the leading cause of fatal and nonfatal injuries among older adults. For older adults in the U.S., fall death rates went up by 30 percent from 2007-2016, according to the National Council on Aging. The president has fallen on a number of occasions in the past.
Axios reporter Alex Thompson explained on Twitter that “top Democrats have privately been saying for months that they’re nervous about Biden tripping on the trail. Today he did.”
Biden is the oldest president in history and in late April, he decided to run for reelection. If he prevails, a second term would see Biden reach the age of 86 by its conclusion.
Former president Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, is only four years younger than Biden.
After his yearly physical, the White House doctor deemed Biden to be healthy, vigorous, and fit enough to handle his responsibilities. However, the president did have a lesion removed that later turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma, which is highly treatable.
Questions over the president’s age and fitness are likely to persist over the entire campaign.
Speaking to graduates earlier in the ceremony, Biden said the world is evolving at an accelerating pace.
“The world you’re graduating into is not only changing rapidly, the pace of change is accelerating as well,” explained Biden. “We’re seeing proliferating global challenges from Russia’s aggression and brutality in Europe to our competition with China, and a whole hell of a lot in between.”