Biden’s age and memory are a significant concern for Americans. According to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, about 86% of Americans, including 73% of Democrats, expressed concerns about Mr Biden’s mental and physical health.
Chicago
Main nahin makhan khayo.
A popular legend in India is that as a child, Bhagwan Krishna was fond of makkhan (Indian white butter) and would often help himself when no one was watching. One day, Mata Yashoda caught him red-handed in the act with traces of makkhan still on his face. Unfettered, Bhagwan Krishna would present a litany of excuses to prove he did not “steal” makkhan. Surdas, the 16th-century Bhakti poet, immortalized this story in his poem “main nahin makhan khayo.”
Last week, a comparable scene played out at the White House in Washington, D.C.
It was around 7.30 p.m. (Washington, D.C., time) on Thursday, 8 February, when the news broke that President Biden would make a statement in the next 15 minutes. There was a post to this effect on the microblogging site X by the White House’s official handle. Mr Biden’s official X handle promptly reposted that with a quote: “Join me as I deliver remarks.”
As everyone suspected, the remarks were about special counsel Robert Hur’s stinging report regarding Mr Biden’s handling of protected “classified” documents. “I am well-meaning, and I am elderly, and I know what the hell I’m doing,” Mr Biden told the WH press corps. But what was supposed to be a defence of Mr Biden’s dogged forgetfulness—calling el Sisi President of Mexico, for example—turned into a full display of the trait defining his presidency.
IT IS ‘CLASSIFIED’
On 8 August 2022, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided former President Donald Trump’s private estate, Mar-a-Lago, in Florida. The FBI operation was in response to allegations that Mr Trump took 15 boxes of documents, some marked “classified,” when he left the White House after the 2020 presidential elections. On the heels of these raids, in November 2022, Mr Biden’s lawyers discovered troves of documents in his post-vice presidential office in Washington, D.C. The office belongs to the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Engagement. Some of these documents had classified markings as well.
Though these documents were found on 2 November 2022, just days before the mid-term elections, the information came to light when CBS made this explosive revelation on 9 January 2023. Earlier in December 2022, Mr Biden’s personal lawyers had found some more classified documents sitting in Mr Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, house garage and in an adjacent room. Mr Biden expressed his “surprise” over these findings. He was “cooperating fully” with the Department of Justice (DOJ), Mr Biden told a press conference on 10 January 2023, in Mexico City, Mexico.
On 12 January 2023, Attorney General (AG) Merrick Garland, the Biden Administration’s chief prosecutor and the head of the US Department of Justice, appointed Robert Hur the special counsel to investigate this matter. As part of the investigation, Mr Biden met with special counsel Hur for several hours on 8-9 October 2023.
NO CRIMINAL CHARGES
Special counsel Hur interviewed 147 witnesses, including a 5-hour sit down with Mr Biden. When Hur submitted his 345-page report on 5 February 2024, three things stood out:
(1) President Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.”
(2) President Biden is an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
(3) “No criminal charges are warranted.”
From a legal perspective, the most shocking yet not entirely unexpected, given the politicization of the Department of Justice under President Biden, was Hur’s conclusion: No criminal charges were warranted.
Some of the documents “willfully” retained by Mr Biden included classified materials about Afghanistan and a notebook with handwritten notes on security and foreign policy. The report also details the utter neglect with which Mr Biden handled these documents. The Afghanistan papers, for example, were found in a “badly damaged box in a garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.”
The other aspect of Hur’s report is that it validates the long-standing suspicion among his well-wishers and detractors about Mr Biden’s age (81) and diminishing memory. Mr Biden has a long history in public life and a trail of lies and embellishments. He was considered a “big mouth” senator and a “foot in his mouth” Vice President for former President Barack Obama. Brazen fabrications, exaggeration, and lies about his life events, achievements, etc.—some of which could be attributed to his fading memory—are closely identified with Mr Biden’s personality.
However, “in his interview with our office,” writes Hur, “Mr Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013—when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).” Mr Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him,” Hur writes.
THE AFTERMATH
Mr Biden’s age and memory are a significant concern for Americans. According to the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll, about 86% of Americans, including 73% of Democrats, expressed concerns about Mr Biden’s mental and physical health. The Hur Report accentuated those concerns and made Mr Biden’s ripe age and diminishing memory part of open public discourse.
The reactions to the Hur Report were swift and on expected lines. A highly placed source within the Republican establishment, who did not want to be identified for this piece, told this author that “it is pathetic and sad that [the White House] keeps trotting [Mr Biden] out to do events where he keeps tripping all over himself. And the press always covers up for him by not calling it out.”
Democrats, on the other hand, tried to shield Mr Biden from criticism in the wake of the Hur Report. “Joe is 81, that’s true, but he’s 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day,” said First Lady Jill Biden. “His age, with his experience and expertise, is an incredible asset and he proves it every day.” Former DOJ spokesperson and a senior AG advisor, Anthony Coley, said in an interview that the appointment of Hur as the special counsel by Mr Garland was “the wrong choice.”
Behind the scenes, the Wall Street Journal reported, Mr Biden has been “furious.” For example, he did not take kindly to the Hur Report characterization that he forgot details about his son’s death. “You think I would f—ing forget the day my son died?” Mr Biden reportedly told a small group of Democrat lawmakers, the Journal reported.
Mr Biden also made it sound like Hur asked him about his son’s death. “How the hell dare he raise that… wasn’t any of his damn business,” President Biden angrily said during his 8 February remarks. As it turns out, Hur never asked Mr Biden about his son’s death. He brought it up himself.
Mr Biden allegedly told his advisers that AG Garland did not do enough to rein in Hur, whose report cast serious doubts about Mr Biden’s diminished mental faculties. He also criticized AG Garland for not moving fast enough in his investigation into former President Trump’s “election interference” case.
DOUBLE STANDARD?
Critics have drawn parallels between the DOJ’s handling of the two cases about handling classified documents—one by Mr Trump and the other by Mr Biden. It has also exposed US media’s double standards in dealing with questions about Mr Trump’s and Mr Biden’s mental fitness in serving as the US Commander-in-Chief.
Both Mr Trump and Mr Biden have been accused of mishandling classified US government documents. While President Biden’s DOJ indicted former President Trump on 37 counts “for willful retention of national defence information,” the same DOJ decided not to charge Mr Biden because he is, according to the Hur Report, “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
During Mr Trump’s tenure, Democrats and American media frequently raised questions about his judgment and mental acuity. They often questioned if Mr Trump suffers from cognitive decline and talked of invoking Article 25th of the US Constitution under the presumption that Mr Trump is mentally unstable. The Article provides procedures for transferring presidential powers to the Vice-President in case of the president’s death, incapacitation, removal, or resignation.
In a turn of events, the Democrats now find themselves in a similar situation. But despite the special counsel’s assessment to the contrary, both Democrats and the White House keep denying Mr Biden’s apparent cognitive decline. While the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, asserted that Mr Biden’s mental acuity is “great,” the WH Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Mr Biden “sharp” and “on top of things.”
WHAT LIES AHEAD
The Hur Report has thrown several kinks in Mr Biden’s reelection bid. According to the Pew Research survey, Mr Biden is hugely unpopular, with his net approval rating among Americans down to just 33%. According to the same poll, no demographic majority (greater than 50%), except Democrats, approve of Mr Biden’s presidency.
Domestically, this has created a situation where critics, such as former Republican presidential aspirant Vivek Ramaswamy, have wondered if Mr Biden is indeed running the country and if the Democrats will renominate Mr Biden for the nation’s top post.
Internationally, there is anxiety if the leadership of the world’s pre-eminent superpower is still engaged in the game, intellectually and politically.
The author is a US-based columnist and linguist. He is a recipient of the San Francisco Press Club’s Journalistic Excellence Awards.