A stumble-prone President Biden is taking urgent steps to prevent further embarrassing falls ahead of next year’s election — including working with a physical therapist to improve his balance, wearing tennis shoes and using shorter stairs on Air Force One, according to a report Tuesday.
Biden’s team is said to be determined to protect the 80-year-old president from taking a spill in public, which could hurt his electability — with a recent poll showing that three-quarters of Americans consider him too old to serve a second term in office, reported Axios.
Since November 2021, Biden has been meeting with physical therapist Drew Contreras to perform exercises to improve his balance.
Biden has been doing the exercises most mornings on the advice of his physician, who termed them “proprioceptive maintenance maneuvers” in the president’s health summary released in February.
The octogenarian commander-in-chief’s balance issues — likely related to what his doctor diagnosed as arthritis in his spine and foot — have been thrown into sharp relief after several alarming stumbles.
Biden tripped over a sandbag and fell after delivering a graduation speech at the US Air Force Academy in June.
Since that incident, Biden has been seen more often sporting athletic footwear, as opposed to dress shoes that tend to be more slippery.
The president also has taken to using the shorter flight of stairs on Air Force One, after several awkward stumbling mishaps on his way to the higher flight deck.
In March 2021, Biden tripped three times, and ultimately fell to his knees, while going up the longer staircase leading to the presidential plane.
A similar incident occurred in February of this year, when the president lost his footing as he made his way onto the aircraft to leave Poland.
But even the shorter, 14-step staircase has proven to be a challenge for Biden, who was seen stumbling and bracing himself before flying out of Helsinki, Finland, in July.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates dismissed the Axios report as fitting “an unfortunate pattern of media attempting to sensationalize something that has long been public.”
“This isn’t new — it was proactively and transparently disclosed,” Bates said.
