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The White House opted against having former President Joe Biden board a vessel during a July 2023 visit to a Philadelphia shipyard after learning “lots of steps” were required to get on board, newly released emails show.
The records, obtained by watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and first reported by Fox News, show Department of Transportation staffers attempting to gather information about Biden’s July 20, 2023, trip to the Philly Shipyard and what the president would be doing during his visit.
The DOT’s Maritime Administration (MARAD) had awarded the Philly Shipyard a contract to build a massive National Security Multi-Mission Vessel (NSMV) years earlier – but the agency learned days before Biden’s trip that the White House would not allow the then-80-year-old president to inspect the boat.
“No visit to the NSMV vessel is planned after the WH realized how many steps were involved to get on the ship,” a MARAD official notified members of Office of the Secretary of Transportation (OST), quoting a contact the agency had at that shipyard.
“True – lots of steps on grating,” the message continued in a parenthetical note.
Biden’s visit to the Philly Shipyard (PSI), where he met with apprentices and attended a steel-cutting ceremony for an offshore wind farm construction vessel, came just weeks after he took a hard fall at an Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado.
Since the fall, the president had been observed boarding Air Force One using the aircraft’s shorter set of stairs.
Seven days before the Philadelphia shipyard visit, Biden stumbled on Air Force One’s short staircase as he prepared to depart Helsinki-Vantaan International Airport in Finland.
The White House’s refusal to let Biden board the National Security Multi-Mission Vessel in Philadelphia may not have been the only time the president wasn’t allowed to get on a boat over concerns about the number of steps involved.
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed in his autobiography, “Unleashed,” that the White House would not allow Biden to board the British Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier – the HMS Prince of Wales – ahead of the 2021 G7 summit in Cornwall.
The decision left Johnson questioning Biden’s “physical fitness.”
“His staff told us that he would not in fact be boarding our vast aircraft carrier — which we had proudly stationed in the bay — because it had so many steps; and we wondered what that meant about his physical fitness,” Johnson said, according to an excerpt from the former prime minister’s book obtained by The Telegraph.
