'Diminished faculties,' 'faulty memory,' 'significant limitations': A damning report on Biden's mental state
CBC
A wince-inducing report has just made it that much harder for U.S. President Joe Biden to quell concerns about his age as he seeks re-election.
The special counsel report released Thursday paints the 81-year-old president as suffering from mental decline. And it points to several examples from Biden's hours-long interviews with investigators.
They include Biden struggling to remember what years he was vice-president and being way off when discussing the year of his son's death.
This report landed amid stinging headlines involving the president's repeated references lately to having recent conversations with long-dead world leaders.
A furious Biden reacted at an impromptu evening news conference where he fumed at the special counsel for mentioning his dead son, Beau: "How in the hell dare he raise that?" Biden said.
As proof of his fitness, he then cited his major legislative and other wins, like getting humanitarian aid into Gaza. However, he promptly undermined his own message by referring to Egypt's Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the president of Mexico.
One obvious silver lining in the 345-page report is that special counsel Robert Hur refused to lay charges against Biden for improperly storing classified documents in three locations.
It criticized Biden for wilfully, and wrongly, keeping some documents; but it said others were accidentally mishandled. The report also credits Biden's behaviour as co-operative with investigators, contrasting it with Donald Trump's actions in a similar case.
So the report exonerated Biden legally. But ravaged him politically. The report struck Biden in a sensitive area, as voter skepticism about his age and ability pose a severe threat to his re-election prospects.
Neither Hur nor his investigators are health-care professionals, nor was assessing Biden's mental acuity the purpose of the report.
The report cited several reasons for not charging Biden. One was flattering: Biden's long record of public service. Another reason was damning: that Biden's obvious memory lapses would make it hard to convict him.
Biden showed "diminished faculties and faulty memory," the report said.
His memory "appeared to have significant limitations."
It also said these lapses were evident not only in interviews with investigators last year, but also in recorded 2017 interviews Biden gave to his book ghostwriter.
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