- Rep. Dean Phillips, the lone outstanding challenger to President Joe Biden’s Democratic primary, said the election has been “pretty much handed” to former President Donald Trump.
- Phillips responded to special counsel Robert Hur’s scathing report calling Biden a ‘well-meaning older man with a poor memory’
- The longshot candidate has focused his campaign on warning fellow Democrats that Biden is too old to win a second term
Rep. Dean Phillips, the lone challenger to President Joe Biden’s Democratic primary, said Thursday’s Justice Department report all but handed the 2024 election to former President Donald Trump.
Special counsel Robert Hur’s 388-page report confirmed that Biden would not be charged for keeping classified documents in his garage.
But it also said this was because a jury would likely conclude that Biden had “diminished faculties” and was a “well-intentioned, older man with a poor memory.”
Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, launched his presidential campaign in October after months of sounding the alarm that Biden was too old to win a second term.
“The report simply confirms what most Americans already know, which is that the President cannot continue to serve as our Commander in Chief beyond his term ending January 20, 2025,” Phillips said in a statement to DailyMail.com.
Rep. Dean Phillips, the lone challenger to President Joe Biden’s Democratic primary, said Thursday’s Justice Department report all but handed the 2024 election to former President Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, Phillips pushed back against critics who expressed dismay that Phillips would point to the 81-year-old president’s advanced age and question his fitness for office.
“I’m being attacked for being honest and saying the quiet part out loud — the part DC insiders only do in private,” Phillips said in a message Tuesday.
“But shame on you for all pretending everything is fine,” he said. “You’re leading us—and him—to disaster, and you damn well know it.”
In his message, Phillips included two recent videos of the president.
The first showed Biden campaigning in Las Vegas on Sunday, where he accidentally said the name of French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, instead of the country’s current leader, President Emmanuel Macron.
In the second video, taken Tuesday, Biden calls Hamas “the opposition” before recalling the terror group’s name when asked by reporters about a brewing deal to bring back Israeli hostages from Gaza.
Even before the report’s release Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was peppered with questions about why Biden kept botching names and about his overall health.
President Joe Biden made an impromptu statement at the White House on Thursday evening about Hur’s report, telling reporters “my memory has not deteriorated,” and then saying the Egyptian president was from “Mexico.”
On Thursday night, Biden spoke angrily about the contents of Hur’s report, telling reporters, “I know what the hell I’m doing!” My memory hasn’t gotten any worse. My memory is fine. Look what I’ve done since I’ve been president.’
“Nobody thought I could get through the things I was given. How did that happen? “I guess I just forgot what was going on,” the president added.
But before the end of his question-and-answer, Biden made another blunder: He referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the “President of Mexico.”
Phillips said the report marked “another sad day for America and especially for President Biden and his family.”
“This report, which is already experiencing the lowest approval ratings in modern history and losing in every major battleground state, has all but handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump if Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee – and I invite fellow Democrats out to face the truth. the 2024 hopeful added.
Phillips is now the only mainstream Democrat to challenge Biden for the nomination, with self-help guru Marianne Williamson dropping out of the race on Wednesday after a disappointing showing in the Nevada primaries.
The Minnesota congressman entered the race too late to appear on Nevada’s ballot.
He received 19 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, where Biden did not appear by name on the ballot due to the Democrats’ rescheduling of the primaries, but barely registered for the Democratic primaries in South Carolina on Saturday.
Phillips is looking ahead to the February 27 Democratic primary in Michigan and has been endorsed by the Detroit News.