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 could not remember key milestones in his life. 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 and insisting he had not forgotten the year his son Beau died, as Hur claimed. Democrats on Capitol Hill and across the country quickly followed suit.
“Republicans saying Biden is old is the least surprising thing in American politics,” said Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii. “It’s all they have.”
Democrats plan to answer widespread questions about the 81-year-old president’s age and readiness by affirming Biden’s fitness to be commander in chief and trying to discredit people who portray him as weakened. The key to that strategy is contrasting it with former President Donald Trump, the heavyweight Republican front-runner who is himself 77 and has also mixed up names and facts while also facing four indictments and multi-million dollar civil judgments.
The signs of support are crucial for Biden as he prepares for what could be a tight election against Trump. Even before the report’s release, fears were growing that the coalition that helped elect Biden in 2020 was falling apart, making it all the more important for Biden to keep as many supporters as possible on his side.
The Biden campaign distributed talking points to allies 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 has no case, so he decided to make personal attacks on the president.” That is a reference to ‘Make America Great Again’, Trump’s political movement.
The talking points also emphasized that Hur “is a lawyer – not a doctor – so people should draw his legal conclusions and ignore his political opinions.”
The White House has also noted that Biden worked with Hur, who declined to charge him with unlawfully retaining classified documents, while Trump faces charges in Florida after the FBI seized data from his Mar-a-Lago residence.
“The way the president’s attitude was characterized in that report could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated and unnecessary,” Vice President Kamala Harris said Friday. “I will say that when it comes to the role and responsibility of a prosecutor in a situation like this, we should expect that there will be a higher level of integrity than what we have seen.”
The outrage spread to South Carolina, where Biden won a commanding victory on February 3 in the nation’s first Democratic primary, which his campaign designed to project clear strength. Some saw Biden’s strong response to the special counsel as a promising sign.
“I truly believe this brings out the best in the president. It shows he is a fighter,” said LaJoia Broughton, a 42-year-old small business owner in Columbia who voted for Biden in the primaries.
Biden aides say they don’t expect the president or his campaign to address the age issue more directly. They can’t make Biden any younger, noting that attacks on the president his age were also persistent four years ago, when Trump called him “Sleepy Joe.”
Instead, they plan to draw on the blueprint of the 2020 campaign and argue that many voters do not want a repeat of Trump’s turbulent time in the White House. They also plan to highlight Biden’s achievements and an economy that continues to show strength.
“The president has said that age is a fair question in voters’ minds, but if you’re an independent or imitable voter in this country and you’re concerned about your child facing gun violence while he’s in school, it’s the prospect of a national abortion is high.” ban, or the future of our democracy, you may think about the age of the president, but in the end the choice is easy,” said Kate Berner, former deputy director of communications in the Biden White House. “Donald Trump is on the wrong side of all these issues.”
Some Democrats were not so optimistic.
“This is a distraction. When you’re running a presidential campaign, you don’t like distractions,” said Jim Messina, who managed former President Barack Obama’s last campaign.
Messina compared the special counsel’s report to then-FBI Director James Comey’s October 2016 announcement that he was further investigating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified emails while she was secretary of state. Comey’s announcement, which came 11 days before the election, has been blamed for helping Trump defeat Clinton.
In this case, this week’s report comes nine months before Election Day, November 5
“There’s just so much time to process all of this,” Messina said. “Trump has all the trials in store. I would be surprised if this were still a problem in a month.”
Still, Trump’s allies were encouraged this week.
In addition to celebrating the release of the special counsel’s embarrassing descriptions of Biden, Trump won a new set of delegates in Thursday’s caucuses in Nevada, where he ran unopposed.
“We all already know that Joe Biden is senile. What is lost is that Joe Biden is a criminal who has endangered American national security,” Donald Trump Jr. wrote in one of several messages highlighting the new report.
Barry Goodman, a Biden fundraiser from Michigan, said some donors were taking a “wait and see” approach to backing Biden even before the special counsel announcement.
“They wanted to see if anyone else would get in or if Trump would drop out — but no one else is getting in,” Goodman said. “Everyone I talk to, some are more excited than others.”
Still, Goodman said the report did not shake his support for Biden.
Trav Robertson, former chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, described the report as a clear political liability for Biden. But he pointed the blame squarely at Attorney General Merrick Garland for allowing the report to include comments about the president’s age, memory and cognitive functions.
“Merrick Garland did not do his job and only allowed a Trump appointee to fuel a political narrative to distract from Trump,” Robertson said, adding: “Donald Trump cannot raise a glass of water to his lips without to use both hands because he is old. “
Indeed, Biden’s allies have been eager to highlight a perceived double standard, as Biden’s blunders receive far more attention than those of other leading politicians.
Trump repeatedly confused former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., with Republican rival Nikki Haley in recent weeks. Biden obviously did not help himself by naming the Egyptian leader the president of Mexico late Thursday.
“There’s a clear unfairness there that people feel,” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., a former U.S. attorney, said of the focus on Biden’s blunders, criticizing the special counsel’s assessment of Biden’s mental health described as “inappropriate”, “inappropriate”. ‘ and ‘shameful’.
Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., noted that even House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., also recently confused Iran with Israel.
“Who cares?” Garcia said of the blunders. “The president is going to win. I have a lot of confidence in that. Most importantly, he will be taking on a criminal who has already been charged 91 times.”
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Nations reported from New York. Associated Press writers Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Ayanna Alexander contributed to this report.