Joe Biden headed to take a photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro during his final summit as US president on Monday, only to find that they had already taken the photo without him.
Frustrated US officials blamed “logistical issues” for the blunder that led to Biden wasting the opportunity, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers.
This came during a tour of South America during which Biden’s counterparts were looking beyond the outgoing US president politically – and towards his successor, Donald Trump.
Biden’s swan song on the world stage saw the 81-year-old attempt to cement his legacy before Trump destroyed it with his isolationist “America First” foreign policy.
World leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron walked down a red-carpeted ramp at Rio’s stunning Bayside Museum of Modern Art to pose for group photos.
They took to the stage, chatting and joking as they gathered to pose against the backdrop of the Brazilian city’s famous Sugarloaf Mountain. The shot ended in one second.
Then Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came from another direction, after a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the summit — but it was too late and the other leaders had already dispersed.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was also absent from the photo. She, Biden and Trudeau formed a separate caucus.
A US official, who requested anonymity, said: “For logistical reasons, they took the photo early before all the leaders arrived. So a number of the leaders were not there.”
US officials denied that Biden skipped the photo – the official launch by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of an alliance to reduce world hunger – to avoid appearing alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Biden had previously urged G20 leaders to support Ukraine’s “sovereignty” in the face of the Russian invasion in 2022.
Russian President Vladimir Putin was conspicuously absent from the Rio summit. The International Criminal Court demands his arrest because of the war in Ukraine.