Joe Biden went to join the G20 leaders for a group photo at the summit in Rio de Janeiro on Monday, but he arrived too late and found they had already taken the picture without him.
Frustrated US officials said "logistical issues" were to blame for the mistake that caused Biden, along with the Canadian and Italian prime ministers, to miss the group photo.
During a South American tour, Biden’s counterparts were politically focused less on him, as the outgoing U.S. president, and more on his successor, Donald Trump.
Biden, at 81, is making his final efforts on the global stage to strengthen his legacy, while facing the possibility that Trump could undo it with his isolationist "America First" policies.
World leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and French President Emmanuel Macron, walked down a red carpet at Rio's beautiful bayside modern art museum for a group photo.
At a summit in Brazil, leaders gathered for a group photo against the backdrop of Sugarloaf Mountain, but some, including US President Joe Biden, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, missed it due to timing issues. Biden and Trudeau arrived after a bilateral meeting to find the other leaders had dispersed, while Meloni also missed the photo. A US official clarified that the early timing caused the absence and denied claims that Biden skipped the photo to avoid being pictured with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
U.S. President Joe Biden previously called on G20 leaders to back Ukraine's independence following Russia's 2022 invasion. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend the Rio summit, as the International Criminal Court seeks his arrest for actions related to the Ukraine war.