On Thursday, a long-anticipated special counsel’s report regarding President Joe Biden’s unauthorized possession of classified documents explained why the president won’t face charges for doing so.
Setting aside, for now, the appropriateness of that decision, one of the remarkable notes in the report is a point about the president’s mental fitness.
On page six of the report is the following explanation: “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory… It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him-by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
On pages 207 and 207, the report highlights the troubling state of the president’s memory: “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?’). He 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. Among other things, he mistakenly said he ‘had a real difference’ of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.”
The report is damning enough, but then the president tried to defend himself Thursday night in a brief address to the nation. Commenting on the passage that he didn’t remember when his son died, Biden said, “I wear since the day he died, every single day the rosary he got from Our Lady of…” and then trailed off.
While that particular lapse could be possibly attributable to the president’s understandable grief when talking about the death of his son, he made a further mix-up when he answered a question about the ongoing conflict in Gaza. The president referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as “the president of Mexico.”
Needless to say, if the president’s aim was to assuage concerns about his mental fitness, he failed.
Most Americans have had concerns about the mental fitness of President Joe Biden. Just a few days ago, polling by NBC News found that three quarters of Americans have concerns about his mental and physical health.
Americans have every reason to be concerned about the president’s mental acuity, both because of the demands of the job but also because of the very grim possibility of the extraordinarily unpopular Kamala Harris becoming president should President Biden have to step down.
