Confusion Abounds as Voters Mistake “Weekend at Bernie’s 3” Trailer for Biden 2028 Campaign Announcement

by Maxwell Paddington

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A new film trailer that aired during Sunday’s “60 Minutes” broadcast has left millions of Americans in a state of profound confusion after viewers mistakenly interpreted it as President Joe Biden’s official campaign launch for the 2028 presidential election.

The 90-second spot, which opened with a slow zoom on a pair of aviator sunglasses and the sound of a heart monitor flatlining, was actually a teaser for Weekend at Bernie’s 3: Democracy Never Dies, the long-anticipated third installment in the cult comedy franchise. However, the film’s grainy archival footage, slow jazz rendition of “Hail to the Chief,” and the reanimated corpse of a vaguely familiar elderly man being wheeled around in a beach chair led many to assume the ad was political in nature.

“I thought it was a bold, minimalist campaign rollout,” said Greg Hanlon, 58, of Scranton, Pennsylvania. “The imagery, the silence—it was almost poetic. I told my wife, ‘He’s really leaning into the age thing.’ Then I realized they were duct-taping him to a Jet Ski.”

Social media erupted within minutes of the airing, with #BernieBiden2028 trending on X (formerly Twitter) for several hours. Analysts on MSNBC debated the symbolism of the trailer’s closing line, “The party’s not over… until the body stops moving,” with some interpreting it as a defiant message to critics concerned about Biden’s age.

Former White House Press Secretary Ava Nguyen issued a statement Monday morning clarifying the former President had no involvement with the film, and that “any resemblance to real persons, living or otherwise, is purely coincidental.”

“President Biden is flattered by the attention, but he has not been cast in Weekend at Bernie’s 3, nor is he planning a 2028 run at this time,” Nguyen told reporters. “Though he does appreciate being described as ‘still surprisingly limber.’”

Representatives from Liongate Studios, the film’s distributor, were equally surprised by the mix-up. “We thought the title alone made it obvious this was fiction,” said creative director Chloe Mendel. “In hindsight, the motorized wheelchair chase scene might have been too on the nose.”

Despite the confusion, early test screenings for Weekend at Bernie’s 3 have reportedly received high marks from bipartisan focus groups, with one participant noting, “It was the most inspiring political message I’ve seen in years.”

__________________________

Maxwell Paddington is Article 107 News’s Senior Political Correspondent. A graduate of a liberal arts college that shuttered halfway through his final semester, Maxwell has spent the last two decades reporting on things that probably shouldn’t be true but somehow are. He once live-tweeted a local zoning board meeting because he thought it was a secret Bilderberg summit. He lives in Washington, D.C., with three houseplants named after dead Federalists and an ever-growing collection of novelty press passes.

His investigative motto: “If everyone’s confused, that’s probably the story.”