Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Biden, allies push back on report
Special counsel ‘not a doctor,’ aides argue
WASHINGTON — President
Joe Biden’s Democratic allies are launching an aggressive defense against a special counsel’s explosive claims that the 81-year-old president couldn’t remember major milestones in his life, trying to diminish the significance of the prosecutor’s allegations that Biden was too forgetful to be charged for mishandling classified material.
Biden set the angry tone hours after special counsel Robert Hur’s report was released, dismissing the report’s conclusions about his memory. Democrats on Capitol Hill and around the country quickly followed.
The Biden campaign circulated talking points to allies that were obtained by The Associated Press. The talking points refer to Hur, a U.S. attorney during the Trump administration, as a “Maga-appointed attorney who doesn’t have a case so he decided to lob personal attacks against the president.” That’s a reference to “Make America Great Again,” Trump’s political movement.
The talking points also stressed that Hur is “a lawyer — not a doctor — so people should take his legal conclusions and ignore his political opinions.”
The White House has also noted Biden cooperated with Hur, who declined to charge him with unlawfully retaining classified documents, while former President Donald Trump faces an indictment in Florida after the FBI seized records from his Mar-a-lago residence.
Biden aides say they do not expect the president or his campaign to take on the age question more directly. They can’t make Biden any younger.
Instead, they intend to draw on the blueprint of the 2020 campaign
and argue many voters won’t want a repeat of Trump’s turbulent time in the White House.
Some Democrats weren’t so optimistic.
“This is a distraction. When you’re running a presidential campaign, you don’t like distractions,” said Jim Messina, who led former President Barack Obama’s last campaign.
Messina compared the special counsel’s report to the announcement in October 2016 by then-fbi Director James Comey that he was further investigating Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails when she was secretary of state. Comey’s announcement came 11 days before the election.
In this case, this week’s report comes nine months before Election Day, Nov. 5
“There’s just so much time to get through all this,” Messina said. “Trump has all the trials coming up. I’d be surprised if this was an issue in a month.”
Barry Goodman, a Biden fundraiser from Michigan, said he’s had some donors “take a wait and see
approach” about supporting Biden, even before the special counsel’s announcement.
Trav Robertson, a former South Carolina Democratic Party chairman, described the report as an obvious political liability for Biden. But he directed blame squarely at Attorney General Merrick Garland for allowing the report to include comments about the president’s age, memory and cognitive function.
“Merrick Garland not doing his job only allowed a Trump appointee to feed a political narrative to deflect from Trump,” Robertson said.
Trump’s allies were emboldened this week.
Beyond celebrating the release of the special counsel’s embarrassing descriptions of Biden, Trump won a new trove of delegates in Nevada’s Thursday caucuses, where he ran virtually unopposed.
“We all already know that Joe Biden is senile. What’s being lost is that Joe Biden is a criminal who put American national security at risk,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in one of many messages highlighting the new report.