Democrats work on damage control after Biden’s fiery surprise speech

Democrats and their allies were shaping a damage control response on Friday to a hastily organized White House press call the night before that appeared to fall short in its mission to reassure voters about Joe Biden’s mental acuity after it was harshly questioned in a prosecutor’s report.

Senator Tammy Baldwin from the crucial swing state of Wisconsin addressed the conclusions by special counsel Robert Hur that the 81-year-old president’s recall was “significantly limited”, and that Hur would not bring charges over classified documents in part because jurors would see the US president not as a willful criminal but as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.

“I judge a president on what they’ve done and whose side they’re on,” Baldwin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She pointed to Biden’s “strong record of creating good-paying jobs, rebuilding our infrastructure, and lowering prescription drug prices”.

Tommy Vietor, a former Obama administration staffer, wrote on X that the prosecutor’s comments were “just a rightwing hit job from within Biden’s own DOJ. Wild.”

On MSNBC, which often previews the Democratic party line, the host Joe Scarborough addressed the conclusions by the special counsel that the president’s recall was “significantly limited” and he would not bring charges over classified documents in part because jurors would see Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”, not a criminal.

“So bizarre,” Scarborough said. “Why in the world would [Hur] put his neurological assessment of Joe Biden in his report, and why would [US attorney general] Merrick Garland release garbage like that in a justice department report?”

Dan Goldman, the Democratic congressman from New York, told the station that he did not have “any concerns” about Biden’s age or ability. “Remember, the job of the president is to guide our country. It is not to be a cheerleader for the United States. It is to govern our country,” he said.

Referring to missing Hillary Clinton emails that became an issue on the eve of the 2016 election, Scarborough added: “It sure sounds like James Comey in 2016 when he couldn’t indict Hillary Clinton legally so he indicted her politically.”

Vietor echoed that line, claiming Hur had “clearly decided to go down the Jim Comey path of filling his report absolving Biden of criminal activity with ad hominem attacks”.

The long-shot Democratic primary challenger Dean Phillips, who is campaigning against Biden, said Hur’s report had “all but handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump”.

“The report simply affirms what most Americans already know, that the President cannot continue to serve as our Commander-in-Chief beyond his term ending January 20, 2025,” Phillips said in a statement.

Behind closed doors, some Democrats expressed mounting concerns about a re-election narrative that focuses on Biden’s age. “It’s a nightmare,” a Democratic House member reportedly told NBC News. “It weakens President Biden electorally, and Donald Trump would be a disaster and an authoritarian.”

“For Democrats, we’re in a grim situation,” the anonymous source reportedly added.

Biden hit back at Hur’s characterization of his mental condition during an address to the nation on Thursday. The president maintained that his memory was “just fine” and in a tense exchange said “I know what the hell I’m doing” and that remarks about his memory had “no place in this report”.

“My memory is fine,” Biden said. “Take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president.”

“For any extraneous commentary, they don’t know what they’re talking about,” he added. “It has no place in this report.”

At the end of the interview, he referred to Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, as the “president of Mexico” in a response to a reporter’s query about the current situation in the Middle East. The error came after two other public gaffes this week in which Biden claimed to have spoken recently with two long-dead European leaders, Germany’s Helmut Kohl and France’s François Mitterrand.

At the White House, the president brushed off questions about his mental competence, saying the concerns belonged to the questioner, not voters.

Biden’s personal lawyer, Richard Sauber, addressed the concerns in the report, arguing “we do not believe that the report’s treatment of President Biden’s memory is accurate or appropriate” and accusing Hur of using “highly prejudicial language to describe a commonplace occurrence among witnesses: a lack of recall of years-old events”.

Polling has consistently shown that concerns about Biden’s age are seen as his greatest political liability in a rematch with Donald Trump.

A poll by NBC News last month found that 76% of voters had major or moderate concerns when asked whether Biden has “the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term”. Asked the same question about the 77-year-old Trump, 48% said they had major or moderate concerns.

After a mess of a political week for Biden, concerns about his mental acuity are dueling with concerns about Donald Trump’s alleged criminal conduct with voters. According to NBC polling, while voters have more concerns with Biden’s age than with Trump’s, more than half – 51% – said they had major concerns about Trump’s legal issues.