President Biden marked his birthday Monday with a photo of a cake blazing with 81 candles — igniting a firestorm of new jokes about his advanced age.
The image depicted the beaming commander-in-chief sitting at a dining table at the White House, with his face bathed in an orange glow from the 81 candles decorating the top of his flaming celebratory dessert.
The oldest sitting president in US history tried to get ahead of the ageist narrative by posting a series of self-deprecating quips.
“Turns out on your 146th birthday, you run out of space for candles!” Biden joked on his POTUS Instagram account.
The president also used the image for his first-ever post on Threads, joking, “I turned 81 and all I got was a new social platform.”
“And to the workers at the birthday candle factory, I hope your union got you overtime,” he joked.
Still, the image flared up even more jokes as it was spread online.
“Joe Biden’s cake has so many candles on it that it nearly burned down the White House,” quipped one user on X.
“Can’t get over Biden’s birthday cake photo,” another wrote, sharing a gif from “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” showing Will Smith’s character setting a pan on fire.
“Joe Biden got an Olympic torch birthday cake,” a third joked, while others said “Biden is so old his birthday cake looks like a bonfire.”
But not all reactions to Biden’s fiery celebration were equally light-hearted.
“There’s a portal to hell on a plate in front of him,” former National Rifle Association spokeswoman-turned-radio host Dana Loesch wrote on X.
“The cake reminds me of [the] state of the US economy it is in,” another critic griped.
A third seemed to chide White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for failing to manage her boss’s image, writing: “Karine, he looks evil in this pic. Bad look.”
The president spent a part of his special day pardoning a pair of turkeys named Liberty and Bell at the White House — a tradition dating back 76 years.
Biden joked that he was not present for the first turkey-pardoning ceremony because he was too young. He also quipped that he was only turning 60 years old.
“I just want you to know it’s difficult turning 60. Difficult,” he told the assembled audience.
But Biden’s age is no laughing matter, with a growing chorus of critics across the political spectrum questioning his fitness for office in light of his numerous public stumbles and gaffes — most recently Monday, when he botched a joke by mixing up Taylor Swift and Britney Spears.
A New York Times poll released this month found 71% of swing-state voters believe Biden is “too old to be an effective president,” while just 39% said the same of his likely GOP challenger, Donald Trump, 77.
According to a Wall Street Journal poll conducted in September, 73% of registered voters believed Biden was too old, versus 47% who said the same of Trump.
If Biden does win the election next year and serves all four years through January 2029, he would leave the White House at age 86.