Joe Biden's Awkward Exit From MSNBC Interview Viewed 2 Million Times

A short clip of President Joe Biden ending a TV studio interview by getting up and walking off set while the show was still live has gone viral.

The video, of the closing seconds of an exclusive interview by Nicolle Wallace of MSNBC on Thursday, has been viewed 2.2 million times on Twitter as of 3 a.m. ET on Thursday.

In a rare on-air sit-down interview, Biden discussed a range of topics, including the recent rulings of the Supreme Court, the military revolt in Russia and his campaign to seek a second term in the 2024 election.

But at the end of the 20-minute-long discussion, the president opted to get out of his seat and walk behind Wallace as she was rounding off the segment, rather than stay seated as is common for interviewees to do while still broadcasting.

"Thank you, Nicolle," he told Wallace as he rose slowly from his seat, before shaking her hand and making his exit.

As he did, Wallace told the audience: "Don't go anywhere, it's very exciting to air on here."

The responses on social media were largely comical, with many suggesting he may have needed to use the toilet urgently or that there may have been ice cream—a self-professed favored treat of his—waiting backstage.

"When you gotta go, you gotta go," one Twitter user wrote. "Some people just can't hold it at that age."

"He had a nap on the schedule and we don't push nap times for anything," another said.

At 80 years old, Biden has faced questions about his age and mental acuity after a series of public gaffs.

Already the oldest serving president in U.S. history, he will turn 82 shortly after Election Day in 2024—but has brushed off concerns about his physical and mental health, stating in 2022: "I no more think of myself as being as old as I am than a fly."

However, a few users expressed ambivalence to the hasty on-screen exit. "I don't get it. I don't see the big deal," one tweeted.

Newsweek approached the White House via email for comment on Friday.

Biden is not the only politician to make on-camera departures at the end of an interview. As satirist Charlie Brooker noted in 2014, former British Prime Minister David Cameron had an "odd habit" of walking out of shot when he felt the interview was over.

During the interview on MSNBC, the president was asked about the Supreme Court's decision earlier the same day to rule race-conscious university admissions as unlawful.

Citing its decision in 2022 to overturn Roe v Wade, allowing individual states to set their own abortion policies—which Biden has opposed—he said he found it "so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people."

Polling suggests that Americans across the political spectrum are largely in favor of the Supreme Court's latest ruling, but that sentiments are more complex around the legal limits placed on abortion.

The conversation also turned to Russia, which faced an internal mutiny from oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner Group of mercenaries at the weekend over the direction and management of the war in Ukraine, which reached halfway to Moscow before it was called off.

While the revolt largely took the Kremlin by surprise—prompting hurried defensive preparations from the Russian military—Biden said the U.S. "knew things ahead of time," but declined to go into further detail.

The head of Russia's National Guard, Viktor Zolotov, previously said the mutiny "was prepared" by Western intelligence agencies—which NATO allies have denied as disinformation—who knew about the looming rebellion "a few weeks before it began."