While meeting with firefighters in Shanksville on Wednesday, President Joe Biden did something quite unthinkable in an election campaign — wear the opposition’s merch.
The president was at the fire station near the Flight 93 Memorial, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, while marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, according various media reports.
At the event, which was solidly in Trump country, Biden talked about how the country showed a strong bipartisan unity following the 9/11 attacks and said we needed to get back to that, Deputy Assistant to the President Andrew Yates said on X.
Biden approached a seated man wearing red-and-white hat in support of former President Donald Trump and suggested they exchange hats. “I’ll give you my presidential hat,” Biden told the man. “Presidential seal on it.”
Here’s video of the full exchange:
NEW: Full exchange of the incident leading up to Joe Biden putting on a Trump 2024 hat.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) September 12, 2024
Biden: "Sure, I'll autograph [a hat]."
Man: "You remember your name?"
Biden: "I don't remember my name... I'm slow."
Man: "You're an old fart."
Biden: "Yeah, I'm an old guy... You would… pic.twitter.com/yQcCXmtzIZ
“You gonna autograph it?” the man asked Biden.
“Sure I’ll autograph it,” Biden said.
The man teased Biden by then asking, “You remember your name?”
Biden sarcastically said back, “I don’t remember my name. I’m slow.”
“You’re an old fart,” the man said.
In good spirit, Biden returned with, “Yeah, I know. I’m an old guy. I know you wouldn’t know about that.”
Looking out at the crowd in front of him, Biden said, “He reminds of the guys I grew up with. There was always one in the neighborhood.”
Once signed, Biden gave the dark blue president hat to the man, saying, “I need that hat,” referring to the red-and-white hat with “Trump” emblazoned across the front.
“You want my autograph,” the man asked Biden.
“Hell no,” the president said.
Then, from the crowd came someone telling Biden to “Put it on!”
Looking up, Biden told the person, “I ain’t going that far.” That generated a lot of laughter from the crowd.
At that point, Biden loosely put the Trump cap on top of a hat he already was wearing.
“There you go,” said the seated man, who had already donned Biden’s blue presidential hat.
The crowd applauded.
Trump stopped by the same fire station later that day, the Daily Mail UK reports.
The three political figures made stops at several of the same sites Wednesday in commemoration services.
