Joe Biden's "I'm Sick" Tweet

About

Joe Biden's "I'm Sick" Tweet refers to a post by U.S. President Joe Biden's official account on Twitter / X following a coronavirus diagnosis in mid-July 2024. The tweet set up a fundraising appeal, with Biden clarifying he was "sick" of Elon Musk in a reply, but users turned the initial two-word tweet into a caption and exploitable for various memes and jokes, making Biden appear to say things he had not said.

Origin

On July 17th, 2024, Joe Biden was reported to have been diagnosed with COVID-19. ^[1] As the news spread, Biden tweeted "I'm sick."^[6] He followed up with a fundraising appeal to clarify that he meant he was "sick" of Elon Musk and other rich donors trying to buy the 2024 Presidential Election. The first tweet gained over 146,000 retweets and 475,000 likes in one day (both tweets shown below).

Spread

The tweet was instantly the subject of jokes on social media as it spread. Some users made jokes taking the tweet out of context. For example, on July 17th, 2024, X / Twitter user @sexwithuruncle^[2] quote-tweeted the post with a doctored image of Biden on a skateboard, gaining over 13,000 retweets and 184,000 likes in one day (shown below, left).

The same day, Twitter user @jbenmenachem^[3] posted the same joke, gaining over 220 retweets and 3,300 likes in a similar timeframe (shown below, right).

Others joked about the tweet as a duo, editing the second, Musk-focused tweet to joke about a separate issue. For example, Twitter user @snowingsal^[4] edited the tweets to read "I'm sick… of these f-----ts," gaining over 5,100 retweets and 79,000 likes in one day (shown below, left). The same day, user @wabdoteth^[5] edited the second tweet to read "sick as f---," gaining over 90 retweets and 2,600 likes in one day (shown below, right).

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