People Are Celebrating The 2024 Eclipse By Remembering Trump Staring At The Last Solar Eclipse Without Wearing Glasses

The four years that Donald Trump was president were filled with a lot of bad stuff, to put it lightly. But there was some funny and inexplicably weird moments, too, like the time he placed a candy bar on the head of a child dressed as a Minion. Or when he lobbed packages of paper towels into a crowd of Hurricane Maria survivors. And who could forget the time he served a buffet of McDonald’s and other fast food items to the Clemson Tigers football team after they won the National Championship Game (OK, that one kind of ruled)? But the single funniest moment of his presidency might have been the time he stared straight at the sun during a solar eclipse without wearing glasses.

On August 21, 2017, Trump and his wife Melania stood on the Truman Balcony at the White House to watch the solar eclipse. As CNN reported at the time:

This, from the White House pool report of the moment filed by the Guardian’s Ben Jacobs is, um, amazing: “At approximately 2:39, the President initially gesticulated to the crowd below and pointed at the sky. As he did so, one of the White House aides standing beneath the Blue Room Balcony shouted ‘don’t look.’”

The damage was done (to Trump’s eyes), but hopefully he won’t make the same mistake again today, during the first solar eclipse since 2017. Instead, he’ll post an extremely weird video where the outline of his head blocks out the sun. Everyone else is enjoying that Crazy Moment in Trump History.

Wear your glasses, folks.