President Joe Biden is again fanning the flames of controversy over his mental acuity, evincing another episode of confusion on Monday during a ceremony in Washington, D.C.
After welcoming Abdullah II to the White House, he shuffled back and forth behind the Jordanian king, apparently unsure of where to stand while the royal delivered remarks. He seemed to be looking for a marker on the floor.
The onstage confusion spurred expected social media backlash.
Media has been hyper-focused on Biden’s mental state since February 8, when Special Counsel Robert Hur released his 345-page Report on the Investigation into Unauthorized Removal, Retention, and Disclosure of Classified Documents Discovered at Locations Including the Penn Biden Center and the Delaware Private Residence of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
The document verified that Biden had stored Top Secret and Sensitive Compartmented Information in unsecured areas of his Wilmington, Delaware home. Though the investigation concluded that “President Biden willfully retained and disclosed materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” Hur stated that “no criminal charges are warranted.”
However, his reasons for such a strange conclusion grabbed even more headlines than the incriminating findings. Among them:
Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.
Mr. Biden is someone for whom many jurors will want to search for reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury they should convict him — by then a former president who will be at least well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.
Mr. Biden’s memory also appeared to have significant limitations — both at the time he spoke to [his ghostwriter] Zwonitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden’s recorded conversation with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.
In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. 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.
At a press conference after release of the Hur report, Biden denied it all. He assured reporters that there is nothing wrong with his mental abilities. Unfortunately, he ended the conference by telling them that he asked the President of Mexico to open the Gaza border to allow humanitarian aid in.
Meanwhile, poll after poll after poll show that the majority of Americans believe Biden is incapable of another term in office.
