Biden slams criticism of failing memory
An angry and emotional US President Joe Biden defended his mental competence Thursday in a rare evening address as a response to biting comments in a report released hours earlier on his mishandling of classified documents.
Appearing on live television from the White House, Biden was furious over the report’s claim that he was unable to remember even the date of his son Beau’s death in 2015, as well as other key moments in his life.
“There’s even reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden said, visibly fighting to rein in his emotions.
The report from special counsel Robert Hur should have been good news for Biden.
It cleared him of any criminal wrongdoing in securing classified documents, while serving as vice president under Barack Obama, at his private home and a former office.
This stands in sharp contrast with a separate criminal investigation into Biden’s likely November presidential rival Donald Trump, who is accused of taking vast quantities of top-secret documents after leaving the White House in 2021, then obstructing attempts to get them back.
However, Hur unleashed a political bombshell, just nine months from the election, by saying the 81-year-old Democrat came across as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Given Biden’s reduced mental acuity, Hur said, a jury would not, in any case, have found him guilty on documents charges.
Asked about that comment by reporters in the White House after his formal remarks, Biden said: “I am well meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing.”
Speaker Mike Johnson and other top Republican leaders of the House of Representatives called Hur’s report “deeply disturbing” and said it showed Biden was “unfit” for the presidency.
Earlier Thursday, Biden had declared that his exoneration by Hur on any legal issues meant “this matter is now closed.”
Biden has long been fighting attacks from the right and also some within his own party that he is too old to be president. As he gears up for the November election against Trump, Biden is campaigning on his long experience and his stewardship of a fast-recovering, post-Covid economy.