“I don’t need anyone to remind me of when he (son Beau Biden) passed away … I swear since the day he died (of brain cancer in 2015), every single day, I wear the rosary he got from Our Lady …”
US President Joe Biden, 81 years old, stopped seemingly in mid-sentence, perhaps unable to remember … he was at a noisy White House briefing where he was asked about his memory and a Justice Department investigation by Special Counsel Robert Hur which said he could not recollect when his son died. There was more.
A correspondent shouted out, “Special counsel says one of the reasons you were not charged, he says in his description ‘you are a well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory’.”
“I’m well meaning, I’m an elderly man and I know what I’m doing,” Biden countered, saying that “I put this country back on its feet I don’t need his recommendation …”
“I take responsibility for not seeing what my staff was doing … things that were in my garage, things that were in my home were moved not by me but by my staff … I did not share classified information.”
The investigation covered his tenure as vice-president and Biden said he gave full cooperation to the probe, setting aside considerable time to answer questions.
He told journalists “he was occupied … in the middle of handling an international crisis”, when he was interviewed by Hur in Oct-Nov 2023, around the time of the Gaza crisis.
Hur’s 345-page report concluded that “The evidence does not establish Mr Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.”
“They made a firm conclusion: I did not break the law, Period,” Biden said. “The Special Counsel acknowledged I cooperated completely – I did not throw up any roadblocks, I sought no delays.”
Biden’s briefing underscored the deep divide in the media. Fox News described with relish the president describing Egypt’s Abdel Fattal al Sisi as the president of Mexico … of talking to former German chancellor Helmut Kohl in 2021 when he had actually died four years earlier … or of talking to French president Mitterrand recently when he had passed away in 1996.
Fox News chyron under split screen of Biden and Trump as Trump speaks live: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” pic.twitter.com/9eWZxhoXE4
— Natasha Korecki (@natashakorecki) June 14, 2023
Fox also described him as a “wannabe dictator”.
CNN was more charitable, underscoring that voters preferred him but are vexed about his age. A recent NBC poll of 1000 registered voters showed three quarters (of whom at least half were democrats) concerned about his physical and mental health. It noted that the White House “did not say whether Biden underwent any cognitive tests, which some doctors recommend for older adults.”
