- Bernie Sanders is going viral again after walking through the background of a February 20 TikTok.
- In it, Taylor Champ danced with a doorman as Sanders looked perplexed.
"Sensible Vermonter" and 81-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders is going viral again after having appeared to walk through the background of a TikToker's February 20 dance video.
In it, content creator and former professional cheerleader Taylor Champ danced to "In Ha Mood" by Ice Spice alongside a doorman. In the background, Sanders appeared to walk unwittingly into the video's frame, clock the dance recording with the bemused expression of a man who described becoming a meme in 2021 as simply "weird," and turned to skirt the choreography.
@taylorchamp Nailed it @bernie ♬ Ac r7sheed - rhy ️
Champ said she didn't even realize the Brooklyn native had inadvertently guest-starred in her TikTok until after she stopped recording.
"The one moment I step out of my comfort zone, I get in the way of Bernie Sanders walking space," Champ told viewers in a February 20 TikTok. "I apologize. It will never happen again." Champ also mentioned she thought her waving limbs had narrowly missed Sander's wife, Jane Sanders.
In footage Champ shared a few hours later, a woman who shares a resemblance to Jane Sanders walked in front of the camera, noticed she was blocking the view, and apologized with an "Oh, I'm sorry!" to Champ. "I was just hoping she wasn't mad, but she was so sweet," Champ's caption read.
@taylorchamp Replying to @morganraecwc ♬ original sound - Taylor Champ
The politician wrote in his new book, "It's OK to Be Angry About Capitalism," that the experience of his photo from the 2021 Inauguration Day — of Sanders sitting cross-legged on a folding chair, clad in mittens, a mask, and a parka — going viral was "weird," and the attendant avalanche of memes even "weirder."
As Insider's Nicole Gaudiano previously reported, Sanders described the event as the most attention he'd ever received after more than 50 years of public life.
"There I was with my mittens on the moon, at the Last Supper, on the Titanic, alongside Forrest Gump, next to Spider-Man, on top of skyscrapers," Sanders wrote.
The senator, who Curbed's Bridget Read recently described as "grumpy" upon learning that Valentine's Day inexplicably fell "in the middle of the week," seemed similarly perturbed by the attention that photo — wearing the only coat he had in Washington, a "warm Vermont coat," nonetheless — generated. "What else would I wear?" he asked.
Champ's TikTok has garnered more than 1.5 million views in the last day. Commenters have called the politician's response both "aggressively Bernie Sanders" and a cosplay of "Bernie Sanders doing Larry David." Others have described the brief interaction as the very instance in which Sanders "changed his mind about being for the young people."
"If you can't accept Bernie at his 'what are you kids doing?' you don't deserve him at his 'it is an outrage that American workers don't get paid sick days,'" another viewer wrote.
Representatives for Sen. Bernie Sanders did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.