“The special prosecutor's comments about my memory are wrong,” the US president said in an extraordinary televised address yesterday Thursday night (19:45 Eastern Time; 02:45 Greek Time) Joe Bidenwhile he denied knowingly keeping classified documents in his possession.
Visibly angry, Joe Biden assured Americans that he has no memory problems after the release of special counsel Robert Hurr's report on the classified documents case that included politically explosive comments, portraying him as a “well-intentioned” but “bad-tempered” elderly gentleman. memory”.
“I have good intentions, I'm old and I know what I'm doing, where to get it. I don't have memory problems,” countered the 81-year-old US president, who took particular issue with special counsel Hur's finding that he did not remember when Bo's son died. “How dare he, devil?” he said.
The age of US President Joe Biden is back in focus
It was already his main disadvantage: Joe Biden's advanced age came crashing back into the heart of the campaign ahead of the US presidential election, due to his own slip-ups and incendiary comments from a special prosecutor.
The occupant of the White House, 81 years old, on paper at least, should have been happy yesterday Thursday.
A special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Democrat's handling of classified documents has announced that the second-term president will not be prosecuted in the case.
But the judge, who is a Republican, included in the ruling extremely politically charged comments about Joe Biden, who is campaigning for a possible rematch with Donald Trump — the latter of whom has been attacking him for years precisely by questioning the intellectual his condition.
The special prosecutor Robert Hur noted, as reported by the Athens News Agency citing AFP, that any jury would have a hard time convicting Joe Biden, as he would be portrayed as a “nice old gentleman with good intentions but a bad memory.”
He said in particular that the president, when he testified, did not seem to remember how long he had been Barack Obama's vice president, or when Bo's son had died.
“Atopic” comments
The president's lawyers reacted strongly, criticizing the special counsel's “outlandish” comments, stressing in writing that “this finding uses very biased vocabulary to describe something that often happens to witnesses: they have trouble remembering events that happened years ago.”
Politically, however, the damage was already done, and Joe Biden's Republican opponents were quick to take advantage.
“When you're not mentally fit to stand trial (…) you're certainly not mentally fit to be in the Oval Office” of the White House, blasted Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
“Some old man with a bad memory shouldn't be in possession of the nuclear weapons codes” of the US military, bid Kevin Hearn, a Republican congressman elected in Oklahoma.
Forms of the right demand more or less the activation of the 25th amendment of the Constitution, which allows the president to be relieved of his duties if he is no longer able to carry out his duties.
Marjorie Taylor Green, a Mr Trump loyalist, insisted: “If Joe Biden is not mentally fit to stand trial, he is certainly not mentally fit to be president of the United States.”
“Sleeping Joe”
All indications are that Mr. Biden is headed for a rematch on November 5 with his predecessor, Donald Trump, who for years has referred to him with the nickname “Sleeping Joe” and likes in campaign appearances to portray the current president as disoriented , if not stale.
Voters seem far less concerned about the Republican's age, though he's not exactly young either and has also had moments of impressive confusion during the campaign.
However, these cause less of a bang than the incoherent, sometimes completely incomprehensible statements of Joe Biden.
For example, last weekend he referred to a discussion he had at the 2021 G7 summit with … former French president Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996.
He repeated it yesterday Wednesday, this time saying that he had spoken, at the same international summit, with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017.
Each of these blunders reignites the debate over the age and mental state of the US president.
His doctor, in a very detailed opinion released a year ago, described Joe Biden's health as “good”.
Super Bowl
But the american presidentincreasingly, is showing his age: his gait seems stiff, his gaze sometimes blurry, he almost routinely uses the shortest ladder to board or disembark his aircraft.
In a recent poll broadcast by the NBC television network, 76% of voters said they were concerned about whether or not Joe Biden is physically and mentally fit to serve a second term; only 48% expressed the same concern about 77-year-old Donald Trump.
The reduction of the American president's contacts with the media reinforces, at least according to his critics, the hypothesis that his environment is trying to protect him, deliberately putting him on the sidelines.
Joe Biden avoided giving a television interview this year on the occasion of the Super Bowl, the final of the American football championship. Traditionally, the American president before this match, which has a huge spectacle, answers a few questions, not infrequently mixing politics and sports.
The Democrat has not granted lengthy interviews recently, has participated in few actual press conferences and is limited to very brief interactions with reporters.
Source: News Beast
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