Donald Trump has said he deliberately walks ‘nice and slowly’ down stairs out of an apparent fear of falling.
The US president let slip the admission while using a speech to Navy sailors to mock his predecessor, Joe Biden, for falling on stairs during his tenure.
Trump, 79, began his 45-minute late address at the U.S. Navy’s 250th anniversary celebration in Norfolk, Virginia, by briefly thanking the audience for their service.
He spent the rest of the speech weaving between unrelated attacks on his political opponents and boasts about his own presidency.
‘We had a horrible, horrible president who had no clue what the hell was happening’, Trump said.
‘The chances of him walking down those stairs successfully were not good.
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‘And I have to be careful because one day I’m gonna probably fall.’
Biden notably tripped on the stairs up to the Air Force One presidential jet soon into his presidency, fell over on stage once and stumbled or briefly lost his footing on stairs on around three other occasions in public.
He also broke his ankle when he slipped while playing with one of his dogs during his time as President-elect in 2020.
Biden was the the oldest US president to take office at 78, an age Trump has now surpassed. The 47th President is now the same age as Biden during the Air Force One gaffe
Trump was filmed in July also stumbling on the stairs up to Air Force One and has struggled with walking in a straight line during several public appearances.
He continued his US Navy address by suggesting he has an internal monologue consciously reminding him to take care on steps.
‘I always say, walk down the steps nice and slowly. You ever notice? I don’t have to bop down the stairs. Walk nice and slowly,’ he said.
He delivered a more unhinged version of the segue to generals and admirals at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, last week.
The Republican falsely claimed that Biden was seen falling down stairs ‘every day’, adding that the US was ‘not respected’ as a result of this.
He continued: ‘I’m very careful when I walk down stairs, or I’m on stairs, I walk very slowly, nobody has to set a record, just try not to fall, because it doesn’t work out well.
‘A few of our presidents have fallen and it became a part of their legacy,’ he added, though it’s not clear who he was referencing.
Trump then delivered a bizarre musical routine while describing how his other predecessor, Barack Obama, used stairs.
‘One thing with Obama, I have zero respect for him as a president, but he would bop down those stairs [like] I’ve never seen’, he said, before waving his hands around while humming a tune.
‘He’d go down the stairs, wouldn’t hold on, I said it’s great. I don’t want to do it. I guess I could do it but eventually bad things are going to happen and it only happens once. He did a lousy job as president.’
Trump has repeatedly claimed he is the healthiest president ‘of all time’.
Concerns around his health have accelerated this year after he was repeatedly seen with large bruises in his hand.
In July the White House said he’d been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition common among older people in which blood pools in the legs, causing pain and fatigue while standing or walking.
His apparently ‘droopy face’ at an appearance last month fuelled speculation that he suffered a stroke or mini-stroke in August.
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