February 9, 2024, Letters from an American
Why is it that Democrats always pick the wrong guy? Yes, he delivered an honest, nonpolitical, and legal determination of Biden’s guilt or innocence as assigned to do. No, he is not entitled to go forward with his personal BS assessment of Biden a man he obviously distains.
February 9, 2024, Letters from an American, Prof. Heather Cox-Richardson
Yesterday, Special Counsel Robert Hur, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in January 2023 to investigate President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents before he was president, released his report. It begins: “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. We would reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” The Department of Justice closed a similar case against former Vice President Mike Pence on June 1, 2023, days before Pence announced his presidential bid, with a brief, one-page letter.
But in Biden’s case, what followed the announcement that he had not broken a law was more than 300 pages of commentary, including assertions that Biden was old, infirm, and losing his marbles and even that “[h]e did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died” (p. 208).
As television host and former Republican representative from Florida Joe Scarborough put it:
“He couldn’t indict Biden legally so he tried to indict Biden politically.”
Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their teams came out swinging against what amounted to a partisan hit job by a Republican special counsel. The president’s lawyers noted that it is not Department of Justice practice and protocol to criticize someone who is not going to be charged, and tore apart Hur’s nine references to Biden’s memory in contrast to his willingness to “accept…other witnesses’ memory loss as completely understandable given the passage of time.”
They pointed out that “there is ample evidence from your interview that the President did well in answering your questions about years-old events over the course of five hours. This is especially true under the circumstances, which you do not mention in your report, that his interview began the day after the October 7 attacks on Israel. In the lead up to the interview, the President was conducting calls with heads of state, Cabinet members, members of Congress, and meeting repeatedly with his national security team.”
Nonetheless, they note, Biden provided “often detailed recollections across a wide range of questions, from staff management of paper flow in the West Wing to the events surrounding the creation of the 2009 memorandum on the Afghanistan surge. He engaged at length on theories you offered about the way materials were packed and moved during the transition out of the vice presidency and between residences. He pointed to flaws in the assumptions behind specific lines of questioning.”
They were not alone in their criticism. Others pointed out that Republicans have made Biden’s age a central point of attack, but Politico reported last October that while former House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was publicly mocking Biden’s age and mental fitness, he was “privately telling allies that he found the president sharp and substantive in their conversations.” Dan Pfeiffer of Pod Save America and Message Box noted that the report’s “characterizations of Biden don’t match those relayed by everyone who talks to him, including [Republicans].”
He explained: “There are few secrets in [Washington], and if Joe Biden acted like Hur says, we would all know. Biden meets with dozens of people daily—staffers, members of Congress, CEOs, labor officials, foreign leaders, and military and intelligence officials…. If Biden was regularly misremembering obvious pieces of information or making other mistakes that suggested he was not up to the job, it would be in the press. Washington is not capable of keeping something like that secret.”
But the media ran not with the official takeaway of the investigation—that Biden had not committed a crime—or with a reflection on the accuracy or partisan reason for Hur’s commentary, but with Hur’s insinuations. Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted that the New York Times today ran five front-page stories above the fold about the report and Biden’s memory.
Matt Gertz of Media Matters collected some of the day’s headlines: “Eight Words and a Verbal Slip Put Biden’s Age Back at the Center of 2024 (New York Times); “1 Big thing: Report Questions Biden’s memory (Axios)”; “Biden tries to lay to rest age concerns, but may have exacerbated them” (CNN); “Biden disputes special counsel findings, insists his memory is fine” (CBS News); “Age isn’t just a number. It’s a profound and growing problem for Biden” (Politico); and so on.
As far back as 1950, when Senator Joe McCarthy (R-WI) insisted—without evidence—that the Department of State under Democratic president Harry Truman had been infiltrated by Communists, Republicans have used official investigations to smear their opponents. State Department officials condemned McCarthy’s “Sewer Politics” and the New York Times complained about his “hit-and-run” attacks, but McCarthy’s outrageous statements and hearings kept his accusations in the news. That media coverage, in turn, convinced many Americans that his charges were true.
Other Republicans finally rejected McCarthy, but in 1996, congressional Republicans frustrated by the election of Democratic president Bill Clinton in 1992 and the Democrats’ subsequent expansion of the vote with the so-called Motor Voter law in 1993 resurrected his tactics. They launched investigations into two elections they insisted the Democrats had stolen. They discovered no fraud, but their investigation convinced a number of Americans that voter fraud was a serious problem.
There were ten investigations into the 2012 attack on two U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans were killed and several others wounded; Republican-dominated House committees held six of them. Kevin McCarthy bragged to Fox News personality Sean Hannity that the Benghazi special committee was part of a “strategy to fight and win” against then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
The strategy of weaponizing investigations went on to be central to the 2016 election, when Trump ran on the investigation of Clinton’s email practices, and to the 2020 election, when Trump tried to weaken Biden’s candidacy by trying to force Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to say that Ukraine was opening an investigation into Hunter Biden and the company he worked for.
Going into 2024, the House is investigating Hunter Biden, and while witness testimony and evidence has not supported their contention that President Biden is corrupt, the stench of the hearings has convinced a number of MAGA voters of the opposite.
And now the media appears to be falling for this strategy yet again.
Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen outlined how Biden’s performance disproves the argument that he is unfit for the presidency: “The thing about Biden’s memory,” Cohen wrote, “is that he’s presided over the addition of ~15 million jobs & 800k manufacturing jobs, 23 straight months of sub-4% unemployment, surging consumer sentiment, wages outpacing inflation, the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPs Act, PACT Act, infrastructure law, gun safety law, VAWA, codified marriage equality, canceled $136 billion in student loan debt for 3.7 million borrowers, bolstered NATO, and presided over electoral wins in ‘20, ‘22 and ‘23.”
Political strategist Simon Rosenberg had his own take: “As we end this crazy week I am struck that somehow the claim that Biden’s memory is faulty has gotten more attention than a jury confirming that Trump raped E. Jean Carroll in a department store dressing room.”
It may be, though, that the report has been a game changer in a different way than Hur intended it. Hur’s suggestion that Biden does not remember when his son died seems to echo the moment in the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings in which Senator McCarthy was trying to prove that the U.S. Army had been infiltrated by Communists. Sensing himself losing, McCarthy attacked on national television a young aide of Joseph Nye Welch, the lawyer defending the Army.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir?” Welch demanded. “At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” McCarthy didn’t, but Americans did, and they finally threw him off the public stage.
Biden supporters took their gloves off today, producing videos of Trump’s incoherence, gaffes, and wandering off stages, and noting that he mistook writer E. Jean Carroll, whom he sexually assaulted, for his second wife, Marla Maples, when asked to identify Carroll in a photograph. They also produced clips of Fox News Channel personalities Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters messing up names themselves on screen, and gaffes from Republican lawmakers.
Senior communications advisor for the Biden-Harris campaign T.J. Ducklo released a statement lambasting Trump for a speech he gave tonight in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, saying: “Tonight, he lied more than two dozen times, slurred his words, confused basic facts, and placated the gun lobby weeks after telling parents to ‘get over it’ after their kids were gunned down at school. But you won’t hear about any of it if you watch cable news, read this weekend’s papers, or watch the Sunday shows.”
But it was Biden who responded most powerfully.
“There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that…. I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.” And when asked about Hur’s dismissal of him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,”
Biden responded with justified anger:
“I am well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing. I’ve been President. I put this country back on its feet.”
All of a sudden, things are really looking up for Nikki Haley…
Attacking Biden, Nikki Haley Says Trump Has ‘His Own Mental Deficiencies’
NY Times – yesterday
The former governor of South Carolina harshly criticized both President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump after a special counsel report called attention to Mr. Biden’s age and memory.
oh, good. now we are going to run our democracy by aptitude test.
Haley is too dumb to be president, however young she is.
and we, god help us, are too dumb to be allowed to vote if we take the current crop of candidates seriously.
Biden is the only one in the field I would trust with the Presidency.
I shouldn’t have said all that. it sounds like partisan name calling. i meant it to be a clinical diagnosis…like one of those whatchamacallits..you know…competency tests.
Haley wants the young persons’ vote, so she flatters them because all young people think they are smarter than their elders…until they get older.
Haley wants to cut Social Security…but only for the young, because she knows the young are too dumb to know they will get older, and probably not be rich with a job that they love.
In other news (from yesterday)
(AP) — Former President Donald Trump won Nevada’s Republican presidential caucuses Thursday after he was the only major candidate to compete, winning his third straight state as he tries to secure his party’s nomination.
Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, his last major rival still in the race, skipped the caucuses even though they are the only contest in Nevada that counts toward the GOP nomination. Haley cited what she considered an unfair process favoring Trump and instead ran in Nevada’s symbolic state-run presidential primary on Tuesday, when she finished behind the “none of these candidates” option.
Trump will win most, if not all, of the state’s 26 delegates. He needs to accrue 1,215 delegates to formally clinch the party’s nomination and could reach that number in March. …
However, with 95% of the votes counted Ryan Binkley got 536 votes, or 0.9%
Did Hur release his report or did Garland? My recollection from Mueller days was that this type of report was confidential for the AG who could decide to release it or not. Barr released the Mueller report, not Mueller. In any case I expect this anger with Hur to dissipate pretty quickly, since it’s the validity of the message that’s going to matter really. It’s not as of Hur is plowing new ground here, just that maybe there might be a broader discussion of Biden’s neurological condition. Personally I’m not too alarmed by mixing up Egypt and Mexico as both countries are clearly high priorities for the US, but the stuff with Mitterrand and Kohl is alarming. He was under no pressure of any kind to come up with something and his brain produced what seems to be clearly delusions. It’s not acceptable really to have a man who recalls recent conversations with long-dead individuals in this office. That he can’t handle the brief normal Super Bowl interview is telling also. One last act of service to the country would be to step aside and let the VP finish the term.
Eric:
Sometimes it is best not to point fingers at someone else. There are many times I have let things slide. Here is a Republican (Hur) who took advantage of his being in a strategic spot. He attacked a Democrat making his commentary political. That was not his assignment. It still has an impact of reinforcing false beliefs and political in statement.
Hur’s commentary about Biden fails to recognize what Biden pulled off over the last 3 years in staving off what would have been the worse economic downturn beyond what was seem in 2008. trump and Republics gave themselves and corporations an economic boost with the TCJA which will sunset next year for individuals and remain in place for corporations. $2 trillion by 2025 in deficit which people like Jamie Dimon are whining about, “oh the horrors” like little old ladies when they no what the “real” fix is.
This is the Republican party today.
Bill,
it’s a good thing we don’t have to take Eric377 seriously. Having a brain misfire from time to time is not the same as having delusions. Biden has, as you have pointed out, done well enough as President that his competence should not be at issue. We already know that Erik is against Biden on issues…and would find a way to find damning flaws with Biden if he was a card carrying genius. Note that he finds no fault with Trump’s brain.
coberly:
You miss the point in the first paragraph. The prosecutor’s assignment was to find out if Biden was guilty or not. If he does his function in a professional manner as expected of prosecutors, once he decides such, his role stops there and nothing more is said. He took what was supposed to be a five-page report and blathered his way through 300 and something pages critique Biden’s mental being. The prosecutor is not a phycologist and neither is he a physiatrist, the latter of which can make a diagnostic call.
Furthermore and again the prosecutor’s role stopped, ended, was finished, closed, fini once he decided Biden would not be prosecuted as there was no crime committed. Instead, he went on a drunken power binge accusing Joe Biden of everything he could think of for which he was unqualified to put forth such a qualification and had no authority to do so.
His take is meaningless and an extraordinary abuse of power. Listen to Judge Luttig’s take on this tomorrow. It is long and worth listening too.
Bill
I did not miss that point. I agree with you entirely. I thought I was adding to it. Andrew O’Hehir in todays Salon .com…a liberal newsletter took Hur’s point and wrote a nasty piece about Biden’s incompetence, full of the cute phrases and dirty words and perennial liberal hit points to arrive at the conclusion that we need a better candidate than Biden. I got used to stupidity from the Right long time ago. Hate having to get used to stupidity from the Left.
I am always amused by how offended the retards are when we play the game by their rules …