President Joe Biden appeared confused during a visit to Pennsylvania on Friday where he received a less than warm welcome from hecklers branding him a ‘loser’ and urging him to ‘go home’.
The 81-year-old appeared baffled during a visit to a bike shop in the Allentown area, which was one of several small businesses he was there to tour.
Video showed the president looking momentarily bewildered as he was introduced to staff at the store, before appearing to recollect himself and beckoning the employees over to greet them.
Prior to entering he had been heckled with chants of ‘Go home Joe’, the New York Post reports. A few hours later he was branded ‘genocide Joe’ by a vocal mob of Pro Palestine supporters lining the route of his motorcade.
The group chanted: ‘We will remember in November,’ in a reference to the upcoming election.
President Biden was met with hecklers during a visit to small businesses in Pennsylvania on Friday
Video of him touring a bike shop in Allentown showed him appearing confused while being introduced to staff
The 81-year-old was branded a ‘loser’ by crowds gathered in the Allentown area, with others shouting ‘Go home Joe’
The president’s motorcade was also hit by protesters carrying Pro Palestine placards demanding a ceasefire on Gaza
Biden popped into three stores to stress the value of small businesses and talk up his economic record.
‘My name is Joe Biden and I work for the governor and the senator,’ the president said as he stepped into the Nowhere Coffee Co. along with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pennsylvania.
Biden ordered what appeared to be a smoothie. Obviously, onlookers inside the coffee house knew who he was, with one of them joking, ‘This is a normal day.’
Elsewhere his welcome was less warm, with reporters demanding to know his true feelings on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s failure to disclose his hospitalization.
Asked if he has confidence in Austin, Biden responded: ‘I do.’ Asked if it was a lapse in judgment for Austin to not inform him of his hospitalization, Biden said: ‘Yes.’
They were his first public comments on his defense secretary.
The Pentagon said on Friday that Austin remains in Walter Reed Medical Center in ‘good condition, that he has been in contact with senior staff and was ‘actively engaged’ in overseeing and directing the U.S. military’s participation in strikes on Houthi targets.
Biden previously has indicated he will stand by his defense secretary but White House officials agreed the situation was a head-scratcher.
The angry mob branded the president ‘genocide Joe’ and vowed to ‘remember in November’
President Joe Biden also admonished Lloyd Austin for his lapse in judgment when the defense secretary chose not to reveal his hospitalization, but said he still has confidence in him
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, 70, was hospitalized on January 1, but the Pentagon waited three days to reveal the information. He is pictured December 20 in this most recent pic
Austin finally announced on Tuesday he had prostrate cancer after originally refusing to say what he suffered from and facing days of questions about his hospitalization.
The mishandling of the matter is now being probed by the Pentagon.
Austin and Biden spoke this week ahead of the U.S. and British airstrikes targeting Houthi rebels around Yemen in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that took place on late Thursday night.
Biden made Friday’s trip without delivering prepared remarks ahead of a weekend getaway to the presidential retreat, Camp David in Maryland.