For the second time in less than 10 days when discussing the death of his son Beau, President Joe Biden revealed his advancing dementia.
Reacting to special counsel Robert Hur’s report on mishandling classified documents, which said Biden couldn’t remember the date of Beau’s death in 2015, Biden fumbled his angry reply, which included remarks about a wrist rosary Beau gave him.
The counsel’s report confirmed that Biden’s cognitive abilities are rapidly declining, and that he can’t carry out his duties.
Biden Reacts
In his short speech about the report, Biden misrepresented the report. He rightly said that Hur concluded that “the evidence suggests that Mr. Biden did not willfully retain these documents.” But that line referred only to some documents he illegally took to this home and the Penn Biden Center.
Here is the relevant portion of Hur’s report:
The FBI recovered additional marked classified documents at the Penn Biden Center, elsewhere in Mr. Biden’s Delaware home, and in collections of his Senate papers at the University of Delaware, but the evidence suggests that Mr. Biden did not willfully retain these documents and that they could plausibly have been brought to these locations by mistake.
But in his response, Biden left out this item:
Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden’s handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home.
Nor did Biden mention that Hur nearly charged the ghostwriter who collaborated on Biden’s memoirs with obstruction of justice for destroying audiotapes of conversations with Biden after Hur began his probe.
But more importantly, Biden again stumbled in his angry reaction to this claim by Hur that Biden couldn’t remember when Beau died:
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.
Biden answered this way:
In addition, I know there’s some attention paid to some language in the report about my recollection of events. There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that.
Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.
Let me tell you something. Some of you have commented — I wear, since the day he died, every single day, the rosary he got from our Lady of —
Every Memorial Day, we hold a service remembering him, attended by friends and family and the people who loved him. I don’t need anyone — I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away or if he passed away.
The simple truth is I sat for five hours of interviews over two days of events, going back 40 years. At the same time, I was managing an international crisis.
But Biden’s failing memory is one reason Hur didn’t press charges. “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,” the report said:
Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt.
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.
Dementia Obvious
But Biden’s anger was also inappropriate, and likely linked to a symptom of dementia called “sundowning,” which occurs late in the afternoon and evening. “Sundowning can cause different behaviors, such as confusion, anxiety, aggression or ignoring directions,” the Mayo Clinic website says.
Biden spoke at 7:59 p.m., certainly late in the day for an 81-year-old man.
Biden was not only aggressive but also confused. He didn’t finish his thoughts about the rosary.
Biden’s comment — “how in the hell dare he raise that” — was impulsive if not bizarre, as are his rages at underlings and inappropriate behavior in public, other signs of dementia. Hur raised the issue not to insult Biden, but to offer a reason he wouldn’t file charges for Biden’s taking the documents.
As well, Biden didn’t bother letting the nation know when Beau died, probably because he doesn’t remember. Indeed, “remember” appears 29 times in Hur’s 388-page report.
As The New American reported earlier this month, Biden yet again misremembered where his son died. He told the parents of a woman killed in a drone attack in Jordan that Beau did in Iraq.
In fact, Beau died at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in 2015 after a two-year battle with brain cancer.
False memories are another symptom of dementia. Biden has falsely claimed he was a long-haul truck driver, that he “helped desegregate restaurants and theaters” as a civil rights activist, and that he was arrested during a civil rights protest.
But again, Biden probably isn’t lying. Most likely, he does believe Beau died in Iraq, and that he did do the things he claims.
H/T: Ace of Spades
