Senator Tommy Tuberville, who has repeatedly mocked Joe Biden for falling down in public, has become the butt of jokes on X (formerly Twitter) as a video showing him slipping and sliding down a flight of plane stairs while carrying two bags has resurfaced from an incident in 2014, to the glee of social media users.
In July 2023 Tuberville made fun of Biden’s trip to Europe, saying: “You watch Joe Biden over in Europe. I mean, I’m afraid he’s going to fall down every time I turn on television.”
It seems that Tuberville was just asking for it, as users lost no time in pointing out the irony and hypocrisy of Tuberville’s remarks, and some even called it karma.
Tommy Tuberville on Biden’s Europe trip: “I’m afraid he’s going to fall down every time I turn on television.”
Here’s Tommy …. pic.twitter.com/QKLhlK0NUy
— Hoodlum 🇺🇸 (@NotHoodlum) October 11, 2023
Users on X flooded the social networking site to ridicule him, “Tommy Tumbleville,” Brett Meiselas, the co-founder of the liberal PAC MeidasTouch, captioned the clip.
“Queen Karma paid Tommy Tuberville a visit. Stay as long as you like, ma’am. 🤣,” left-wing blogger Brooklyn Dad tweeted.
President Biden has been caught falling on camera a number of times in the last year, including a particularly hard fall at this year’s Air Force Academy’s commencement ceremony when he tripped over a sandbag but he is not the only public figure or politician to have had such a mishap.
One of the most memorable moments of President Gerald Ford’s presidency was not a policy decision or a diplomatic achievement, but a clumsy misstep. On September 24, 1975, Ford was descending the stairs of Air Force One in Austria when he slipped and fell down several steps, landing on his hands. The incident was captured by cameras and broadcast around the world, sparking jokes and ridicule about Ford’s coordination and fitness for office. Ford, who had been a star athlete in his youth, tried to laugh off the embarrassing episode, but it damaged his image and contributed to his defeat in the 1976 election.
President Lyndon Johnson is reported to have said that Gerald Ford—then a congressman, later the President—was “so dumb that he can’t walk and chew gum at the same time”, a joke that gained a great deal of traction after Ford took that tumble.
Being the president of the United States, and constantly in the public eye, can lead to embarrassing or even dangerous accidents in public, and falling down is not the only one. George W. Bush, choked on a pretzel and fainted on his couch, and George H. W. Bush, vomited on the lap of the Japanese prime minister during a dinner.
These incidents show that even the most powerful people in the world are not immune to human frailties and accidents and Tommy Tuberville should remember that—or face the music of payback.
Hello karma!
