During a climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, President Biden was caught falling asleep on camera. This happening prompted a lot of criticism as well as sympathy.
Zach Purser, a reporter at the Washington Post, posted a video on Twitter. In the video, President Biden was seen closing his eyes for 20 seconds when an opening speech of COP26 was being delivered. He was approached by an aide when he opened his eyes and clapped when the speech ended.
The video got over 4.6 million views on Twitter. While some sympathized with the president, others criticized the president for sleeping in a climate change conference.
The Republicans said in a tweet, “America is in crisis, and Joe Biden is asleep at the wheel.”
Also, a former physician in the white house, Ronnie Jackson, wrote, “NOBODY in his right mind believes that this man is running our country. It is so painfully obvious that he is physically or mentally unprepared for work. Work that is BLOW. He needs to retire. America deserves better than that.“
Another Twitter user, Pierce Morgan, said, “God … not the best view when you’re trying to say the word to wake up.”
However, some others sympathized with the American president. They believed staying awake during a boring climate conference would be an uphill task. “I let him know on a trip abroad, the speaker is monotonous, the points for the conversation are repeated …” Daniel Garza wrote in a tweet.
A White House spokesman during the George W. Bush regime, Ari Fleischer, tweeted “it’s hard to blame him.”
Another Twitter user, Natalie Johnson, tweeted: “To be honest, I would also fall asleep during the climate conference,”
Amid the wave of criticism and sympathy, former President Donald Trump took the opportunity to poke fun at Joe Biden. Trump claimed that Biden is fed up hearing about global warming, hence he slept.
Trump said in a statement, “Even Biden couldn’t bear so many rumors of a global warming hoax, the seventh-largest hoax in America.”
He continued, “Biden went to Europe claiming that global warming was his top priority, and then fell asleep right away, in front of the whole world, at the conference itself,” he added. “No one who has true enthusiasm and faith in a subject will ever fall asleep!”
Trump had always been an avid critic of global warming after pulling the US out of the Paris summit during his regime. Biden had to apologize upon arrival. “I don’t have to apologize, but I do apologize for the fact that the United States, the last administration, withdrew from the Paris Accords and pushed us a little beyond the G8,” he said.
