US President Joe Biden, attending his final summit as president on Monday, arrived for the group photo with fellow G20 leaders in Rio de Janeiro, only to discover the picture had already been taken without him.
Along with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Biden missed the shot, which US officials attributed to “logistical issues.”
This incident occurred during Biden’s South American tour, where his counterparts have been focusing more on his successor, Donald Trump, than on the outgoing US president.
At 81, Biden is working to solidify his legacy before Trump, with his “America First” isolationist foreign policy potentially undoing much of Biden’s efforts.
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 Bayside Museum of Modern Art to take the group photo. They chatted and posed for the shot with the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain in the background, completing the photo in just seconds.
Biden and Trudeau, after a bilateral meeting, arrived from a different direction but arrived too late as the other leaders had already dispersed. Meloni, Biden, and Trudeau gathered separately for a brief huddle.
A US official, speaking anonymously, explained that the photo was taken early due to logistical issues, and several leaders were not present.
US officials also dismissed suggestions that Biden missed the photo to avoid appearing alongside Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, pointing out that Biden had earlier called for support for Ukraine’s sovereignty in light of Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who faces an International Criminal Court arrest warrant over the Ukraine war, was notably absent from the summit in Rio.
