In yet another incident that likely wasn’t on anyone’s bingo card regarding President Joe Biden, he put on one of former President Donald Trump’s classic MAGA hats during a meeting with firefighters and their families in Shanksville, PA, on the 23rd anniversary of the horrific 9/11 attacks in 2001. The White House quickly put up an explanation of what happened and why he put on the hat, which it claimed was for a hat exchange to show unity.

As background, Shanksville is where United Flight 93, the flight on which the passengers rose up and took back control from the hijackers so that their plane couldn’t hit yet another target, crashed. It was during President Biden’s visit to the area that, while with the firefighters and their families, it appeared that someone convinced him to put on one of the distinctive hats as a sign of unity.

That explanation of unity appears to be correct, or at least justified by the video, as in it the elderly president is seen joking in what appears to be a good-natured manner with members of the crowd and then, with a smile, put on the MAGA hat. He apparently gave one of his hats to a Trump supporter in attendance at the event.

As might expected, conservative influencers quickly took to posting the video and photos of the incident. For example, Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump ally, posted a picture of Biden wearing the hat and captioned it, “This is a real photo that was taken today in Pennsylvania. The day after the debate, Biden put on a Trump 2024 hat. You can’t make this stuff up.” Here’s the picture:

In a post on X, In a post on X, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates noted the unity explanation for the hat incident, saying, “At the Shanksville Fire Station, President Joe Biden spoke about the country’s bipartisan unity after 9/11 and said we needed to get back to that. As a gesture, he gave a hat to a Trump supporter who then said that in the same spirit, POTUS should put on his Trump cap. He briefly wore it.”

Despite the unity explanation for the incident, other conservative accounts joked about the reason for Bien putting on the hat. For example, The Typical Liberal joked (falsely/incorrectly) that it was Biden endorsing Trump, saying, “Someone just sent this video in to me — The Shanksville PA Firefighters talked Joe Biden into putting on a MAGA hat! What in the world is going on?! Is this an endorsement? 😂” Similarly, the Trump War Room account joked, also incorrectly, “🚨BREAKING: Kamala did so bad in last night’s debate, Joe Biden just put on a Trump hat.”

Watch the video here:

🚨BREAKING: Kamala did so bad in last night’s debate, Joe Biden just put on a Trump hat. pic.twitter.com/OzgCRKIbKp

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 11, 2024

Trump, during the debate, claimed that President Joe Biden “hates” Vice President Kamala Harris, telling the crowd, in reference to how events occurred where the president dropped out and VP Harris got the nomination, “I’ll give you a little secret: He hates her. He can’t stand her, but he got 14 million votes. They threw him out. She got zero votes.”

Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video