Biden, 81, seen for the first time in SEVEN DAYS as he prepares for debate with Trump: Joe leaves Camp David after a week for the most crucial showdown of his career

President Joe Biden, 81, broke down Thursday afternoon after spending seven days at Camp David in preparation for tonight’s debate against former President Donald Trump.

Biden took Marine One from the presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains to Joint Base Andrews, where he boarded Air Force One bound for Atlanta, Georgia.

The first general election A debate is being held on CNN‘s headquarters.

The president waved to reporters on the platform and appeared to be wearing a new pair of shoes – which DailyMail.com identified as The ØriginalGrand Energy Twin Oxfords from Cole Haan.

The president spent last week’s June vacation at his home in Rehoboth Beach and then headed to Camp David for intensive debate preparation.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre did not tell reporters aboard Air Force One how the president had spent his week, citing the Hatch Act, which prohibits her from discussing political campaign matters.

“The president is president wherever he is,” she said. “He can do his job wherever he is,” Jean-Pierre repeated.

“And I will say this: When the president has an opportunity to speak directly to the American public – in this case, there will be millions of Americans watching – he takes that opportunity very seriously.”

The debate could be a defining moment for the 81-year-old president, as Americans are wary of giving the oldest president in history a second term.

It will be a major test of the president’s mental fitness as he will stand on stage with only a notepad, a pencil and a bottle of water.

He will not have the assistance of the teleprompter and will not be allowed to talk to assistants during commercial breaks.

Each campaign has highlighted the other candidate’s gaffes and stumbles, but debate experts say it’s Biden who really can’t afford a senior moment.

While Trump has made verbal gaffes lately — this month the White House had to respond to a trio of what press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has called “cheap fakes” — viral videos that appeared to show Biden wandering off or freezing.

In Italy, there was a video showing Biden looking the wrong way during a meeting with paratroopers. The image wasn’t exactly improved by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni sending him back to pose for a photo.

In reality, Biden was talking about paratroopers who had landed just out of frame.

In another video, during a Juneteenth celebration, Biden stares at the musical performance, smiles and watches as other attendees dance.

Jean-Pierre resisted at a press conference and asked why this was a crime.

“The president was standing there listening to the music and he wasn’t dancing. “Excuse me, I didn’t know that dancing was not a mental problem, but a health problem,” she said at the June 17 briefing.

“That’s a weird thing to highlight, if you look at the people around him – if you look at the extended video of the people around him, they weren’t, they weren’t – there were a few people dancing too not,” she added.

A third “cheap fake” occurred when Biden appeared to hesitate briefly before leaving the stage at his A-list fundraiser in Los Angeles with George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and former President Barack Obama.

The much younger Obama walked Biden, his former vice president, off the stage.

Before the era of cheap knockoffs, Biden fell off his bike in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and stumbled several times on the steps of Air Force One.

He now usually boards the larger Air Force One and takes the shorter flight of stairs.

Biden also tripped over a sandbag during a graduation ceremony in Colorado last summer.

Biden’s campaign has responded by highlighting moments when Trump, who is only 3.5 years younger, appears to be showing his age.

‘Here’s a montage of Donald Trump getting confused, lost, wandering off and not waving to anyone,’ an X-post from the @BidenHQ account said last week.

The campaign then shared a 2.5-minute video with clips of Trump, from during his presidency, leaving events before he was supposed to, or standing awkwardly in place when he was supposed to leave.

The battle over who is best suited to be president began four years earlier.

During the 2020 campaign cycle, video of Trump tiptoeing down a ramp during an appearance at West Point in June went viral.

That led to similar questions about Trump’s fitness, with him having to deny having Parkinson’s disease.

“I stayed there for hours. And what do I do? I get publicity for going down a slope,” said one Trump stunned to The Wall Street Journal. ‘And does he have Parkinson’s? I don’t think so.’

In an initial tweet about the incident, which was dubbed “ramp-gate,” Trump described the ramp as “very long and steep” and added that it “had no handrail and, more importantly, was very slippery.”