Biden Blasts Special Counsel’s Report As His Staff Analyzes Risk Of Short Circuit In Campaign

(CNN) — Amid an election process already shaped in part by voter concerns about the president’s age and fitness for office, special counsel Robert Hurr’s report represents a legal victory but a political landmine for Joe Biden.

The President’s fury on Thursday night made this clear.

Biden’s advisers know that there is no issue that incites more than a little anger in his boss against his family. So it was no surprise in the White House when a furious Biden came out on Thursday to forcefully refute, among other things, Hurr’s report claiming that he had forgotten the date of his son’s death.

“How dare you bring that up?” Biden was furious in the diplomatic reception room, where reporters had gathered for the president’s statement.

His visceral anger — one of the brightest public flashes ever of what his advisers say is a bad temper he keeps largely private — reflected a feeling that had been simmering inside the White House for days, as the president’s lawyers met for the first time. Timing of a copy of the report prepared by Hurr following an investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.

Behind the scenes, Biden’s aides were furious about a portrayal they said was grossly inappropriate and, more importantly, nowhere near the person they interact with every day.

Biden’s aides use words like “sharp” and “relentless” to describe their boss, especially when it comes to conflicts abroad or with world leaders. He describes long meetings in the middle of the night, lightning trips around the world and hours-long lines, which explain a man who, according to him, hasn’t missed a beat.

Democratic Rep. of New York. Daniel Goldman, who spoke to Biden by phone a day before the Oct. 8 interview with Hur, said the president was “sharper than anyone I’ve ever talked to” about the situation in the Middle East, which was falling apart at the time. .

“His expertise and mastery of a complex geopolitical situation was simply impeccable,” Goldman said, adding that he did not know what happened in Biden’s meeting with Hurr. “I don’t know what happened there.”

Biden explodes into public view

As details of the public report emerged, Biden addressed some of the details included in the final version about his timing and recollection of the details. In a private meeting with Democrats in Virginia on Thursday afternoon, Biden cursed as he vented his anger.

At the meeting, Biden asked how anyone could believe he would forget the day his son died, using expletives to emphasize his anger, according to people familiar with his comments. “How the f-k could I forget that?” Biden said, according to one of the people.

People on the continent interpreted the forced response as a sign of how much the president was disturbed by the report.

Biden’s outrage was on display for all to see Thursday night, when the president mocked the allegations about his memory as “weird comments” and claimed Hurr and his team “don’t know what they’re talking about.”

“He has no place in this report,” Biden said before dismissing reporters’ questions about his fitness for office.

“I have a good memory,” he asserted.

Moments later, while responding to a question about the Gaza crisis, Biden mistakenly referred to Mexico when he meant Egypt, exactly the kind of slip that his rivals have taken advantage of to question his mental acuity, and a clear sign that doubts about Biden’s competence do not exist. To be overcome by a single fiery press conference.

Hurr, a former Trump Justice Department official, denied the press’ allegations, noting that Biden’s handling of classified documents compares favorably to Donald Trump. However, the words Biden’s lawyers used to describe Hur’s document were scathing: “inappropriate,” “inaccurate,” “false,” “outlandish,” “baseless” and “irrelevant.”

The source of his anger: Biden’s multiple narratives are forgotten, unable to remember some of the important dates in his life or the contours of a decade-long political debate. In a line that seems destined to greatly influence the upcoming campaign, Hurr said Biden presented himself in an interview as a “well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”

Biden’s defenders jumped to his defense, saying the descriptions were inaccurate, exaggerated and even ageist. And the president said that at least that part of Hur’s narrative was true.

“I mean well. And I’m an old man,” he said. “And I know what I’m doing. I’ve been president and put this country back on its feet. I don’t need your recommendation.”

Still, if Hurr’s claims about Biden’s memory had come in a vacuum, separate from what Americans were already seeing and hearing, they might have seemed less credible. But coming at a time when American voters were already considering the president’s age and mental health — and, in polls, expressing deep concerns about both — the words only reinforced what will be Biden’s biggest political challenge in the next nine months. .

On Thursday, however, Biden briefly dismissed concerns about his age — also showing up in public polls — and instead attributed the concerns to the media.

“That’s your judgment. That’s your yardstick,” he told CNN’s MJ Lee, raising his voice.

Constant teasing for ‘Biden World’

In public, however, Biden can sometimes appear forgetful, as happened this week when he verbally transferred the names of former (and dead) foreign leaders to current ones. In those episodes, Biden was describing an international summit in 2021 when he recalled talking to German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996.

There are other signs of its age. He is noticeably slowed and has a stiff gait, which his doctor attributes to previous injuries. And he clears his throat so often (a symptom of reflux, according to the doctor) that he sometimes has to explain himself, as he did at a fundraiser this week when he said he swallowed a cough drop.

About 45 minutes before Hurr’s report was made public, the White House was working to minimize verbal errors, saying it was normal for people to lie.

White House press secretary Karin Jean-Pierre said, citing the recent examples of House Speaker Mike Johnson and TV host Sean Hannity, “A lot of people, elected officials … can sometimes lie.” He also said that while he attended meetings with Biden, he never saw him mix up people’s names.

There are few things that irritate Biden or White House officials more than public questions about the president’s age and expertise, making Thursday’s report a source of frustration and muted reactions.

One official told CNN that he considered some of the criticisms made in the lengthy report to be “very misplaced” and “simply wrong.” White House officials were particularly upset by allegations contained in the report that Biden had memory and recall problems during his hour-long meeting with Hurr in October, including the death of Beau Biden.

Early in the interview in the fall, Hare acknowledged to the president that he would ask him about some things from long ago and encouraged Biden to remember things as best he could, in addition to thanking him for the grant, the official said. An interview in the midst of a serious international crisis.

“Of course, it’s understandable that he was distracted and managing the crisis in Israel and the Middle East,” the official said. “Now to go back and suggest that it was indicative of some major problem with memory is wrong. That’s wrong.”

Perhaps the biggest objection among White House officials was a reference in the report that Biden “didn’t remember until years later, when his son Beau died.”

“She remembers the day Beau died every day of her life,” the official said. “To suggest otherwise is insulting.”

Strategy in Development

As Biden’s campaign shifts into general election mode, top officials insist the best solution to the president’s age-related concerns is for voters to see as much of him — away from home and on the campaign trail — as possible. The new year has already seen a significant increase in traditional political stops for Biden: visits to restaurants and small businesses where he meets voters and talks one-on-one.

Before the report’s release, a major concern among Biden’s advisers was that Republicans would seize on its findings about documents found in the president’s home and link them to the greater legal risks Trump faces over his own handling of the material. As it turns out, the report clearly differentiates between the two cases, noting “some material differences between Mr. Trump’s case and Mr. Biden’s case.”

Instead, it was questions of mental acuity that immediately caught the attention of Biden advisers and lawyers who saw the report before its public release.

The strategy of accepting legal conclusions while vigorously challenging “irrelevant critical comments” had been taking shape privately for several days. Lawyers outside the White House and Biden have been involved with the special counsel’s office on the report since at least Monday, when they strongly rejected the claims about Biden’s memory as “unethical” and “not supported by the facts” in a letter.

The report was released anyway, including objections from Biden’s lawyers, but only at the end of the nearly 400-page report.

Biden’s team pointed to the timing of his interview — in the two days after the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel — to show a leader concerned with world events rather than a snapshot of historical memory.

“I was in the middle of managing an international crisis,” Biden said Thursday, an hour after the report was released.

CNN’s MJ Lee contributed to this report.
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