Biden’s Age and Memory Rise to Center of 2024 Presidential Campaign
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February 10, 2024Vice President Kamala Harris pushed back forcefully on Friday against a special counsel report that questioned President Biden’s memory, describing it as “politically motivated.”
“The way the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated,” Ms. Harris said in response to questions from reporters at the White House.
She also said Mr. Biden had sat down for in-person interviews with the special counsel’s office just a day after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
“It was an intense moment for the commander in chief of the United States of America,” Ms. Harris said. “He was in front of it all, coordinating and directing leaders who are in charge of America’s national security.”
The vice president’s first comments about the report provided a glimpse into how the White House will proceed after the report by Robert K. Hur, the special counsel, into Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents concluded that he was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” and that he had “diminished faculties in advancing age.”
Her comments suggest the White House plans to attack the report as more a partisan memo than a legal document.
The release of the report on Thursday forced the White House into immediate damage control, with the president holding a quickly organized news conference to push back on its conclusions about his mental acuity.
The report found that Mr. Biden had “willfully” retained and disclosed classified material after leaving the vice presidency in 2017 but concluded that “no criminal charges are warranted.” But those conclusions were almost immediately overshadowed by the characterization of Mr. Biden’s memory.
