Trump touched down in Cleveland on Tuesday for the Patriot Games, and the weather didn’t do his usual staircase routine any favors.
Rain and wind swept the tarmac as an aide handed him an umbrella at the top of the Air Force One stairs. He worked his way down one step at a time, one hand locked on the railing, the other trying to keep the umbrella from turning inside out.
At the bottom stood ESPN’s Pat McAfee in a t-shirt, jeans and a backward cap, no umbrella in sight.
Reuters photographer Bo Erickson caught him standing there in the downpour, captioning the shot simply as McAfee “waiting to greet POTUS off AF1.”
.@PatMcAfeeShow standing in pouring rain in Cleveland, waiting to greet POTUS off AF1 pic.twitter.com/IeGKZLDrvS
— Bo Erickson Reuters (@BoKnowsNews) August 11, 2026
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Journalist Aaron Rupar posted a different clip of the same arrival, sourced from local station WKYC, with a sharper read on it: “Trump still can’t open an umbrella, struggles to get down stairs of Bribe Force One.”
Trump still can’t open an umbrella, struggles to get down stairs of Bribe Force One pic.twitter.com/oY2yGC2xsK
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 11, 2026
The White House’s own version left that part out entirely.
Rapid Response 47 posted a clip of the landing, captioned “POTUS steps off Air Force One in Cleveland with a signature fist bump to the crowd,” trimmed so that the shakier moments on the stairs never made it into the frame.
A second post from the same account, running 48 seconds, thanked the “hardworking Ohio Patriots” who came out in the rain to greet him.
.@POTUS steps off Air Force One in Cleveland with a signature fist bump to the crowd 👊🇺🇸 https://t.co/0uykVxvJqB pic.twitter.com/ZjOTs9bN4i
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) August 11, 2026
Walking to Marine One a short while later, Trump kept it over his own head, leaving McAfee to get soaked the entire way across the tarmac. McAfee climbed the helicopter steps first. Trump followed with the umbrella still open, got it briefly wedged in the doorway, then closed it and stepped inside.
McAfee wrote afterward that he’d “had a BLAST,” and later sat next to Trump at that evening’s Patriot Games finals, pumping his fist when someone in the crowd yelled, “We love you, Mr. President!”
Had a BLAST celebrating high schoolers from across the country with the Heads of Disney, ABC, ESPN, and… The United States Of America
I’m proud of all parties getting behind this important initiative to keep future generations excited about remaining active.
Cheers to the… pic.twitter.com/FcaLih39qV
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) August 12, 2026
His willingness to appear publicly with Trump has already drawn the same kind of attention NFL quarterbacks Jaxson Dart and Mason Rudolph got after their own visits to the White House.
Trump has talked before about why he moves carefully near stairs, and the explanation usually circles back to how he thinks the press would cover a fall.
“I’m very careful when I walk, by the way, because if I ever fall… the fake news… they’re going to have… that headline will go on for years,” he said at a Rose Garden event in May. He made nearly the same point on The Dan Bongino Show back in February: “Ever noticed how slowly I am these days? Nice and slowly, I’m not looking to set any records. You don’t wanna go down. Could happen, could happen.”
Featured image via X screengrab
