The latest bad optic for Joe Biden? A falling Christmas tree

President Joe Biden wasn’t anywhere near the national Christmas tree when high winds knocked it down on Tuesday. He also didn’t install it. But the mishap was the latest in a series of bad optics for his presidency, and the internet pounced immediately.

The fallen tree was likened to the president’s policies and to the occasional falls that Biden himself has had when photographers were present. “Biden’s presidency in one pic,” one meme said. Another person suggested that the Bidens’ cat, Willow, was responsible, given the feline tendency to sabotage Christmas trees.

A spokesperson for the National Park Service said the tree fell over around 5 p.m. because of high winds that accompanied a cold front. Although a crane quickly pulled it back up and it was standing tall again an hour later, there was plenty of time for photos to be snapped and for jokes, some of them cruel, to be shared.

Even those who weren’t making fun of the president saw humor in the tree falling down, with Katie Rogers, White House correspondent for The New York Times, saying that the tree “eschewed its festive duties” and that the story “is basically an insert-your-own metaphor exercise.”

In a week made solemn by funeral services for Rosalynn Carter and continued tension in the Middle East that has canceled Christmas celebrations in Bethlehem, it was an unexpected and lighthearted moment, to which many families can relate. (The internet is full of tips on how to keep your Christmas tree from falling over, inside or out.)

But the national Christmas tree is a big deal; it even has its own website. The tree-lighting ceremony that is scheduled for Thursday will shut down traffic Thursday afternoon around the White House and feature an array of performers, including Dionne Warwick and Joe Walsh, in a yuletide celebration that will be broadcast on CBS Dec. 15. The tree, a Norway spruce, was cut Nov. 1 in West Virginia and installed Nov. 14, replacing a living tree that had developed a fungal disease.

This wasn’t the first time the national Christmas tree has fallen, The Washington Post reported. It’s done so at least three other times, including in 2011 when Barack Obama was president.

But unfortunately for the Biden administration, the toppled tree fits nicely with a series of other images that Biden detractors have seized on to ridicule the president. Another happened just nine days ago, when the White House released an image of the president with a birthday cake so ablaze with candles that it looked like it was on fire. One writer called it “the scariest photo he’s ever taken.”

“President Biden survived the evening, even though the chances of the White House burning down were the highest since the War of 1812,” Olivia Craighead wrote for The Cut.

Then there was the famously red-tinted backdrop at Biden’s speech in Philadelphia in September 2022, widely described on social media as a “hellscape” that contributed to the president’s “Dark Brandon” persona, which he has embraced. Tight cropping made it look worse than it was, cutting out the blue and white lights seen in a wider view, but this was the image stuck in the public’s memory:

As for the fallen Christmas tree, although some early reporting said it might not be salvageable and will have to be replaced, the tree’s official website makes no mention of the mishap, and there’s been no indication that the tree-lighting will be postponed or that another tree is coming.

Meanwhile, The Weather Channel wants us to make sure we have our Christmas trees straight in another way, noting, “The National Tree is often confused with the U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree, a larger tree that sits on the West Lawn of Capitol Hill. Unlike the National Christmas Tree, the Capitol tree is selected from one of the country’s national forests and brought in via truck each year. It was successfully lit Tuesday.”