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Yesterday was rough for President Joe Biden. A blistering special-counsel report cleared him of the threat of charges in his classified-documents case, in part because prosecutors expected that he’d present to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Then Biden held a press conference about the report—and mixed up two world leaders. All of this is bringing to the fore an issue that Biden has tried to push aside: his age.
I spoke with my colleague David Graham, who covers politics, about how last night’s slipup fits into Biden’s long history of gaffes, and how both the special-counsel investigation and the press conference could affect his campaign.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
An Unavoidable Issue
Lora Kelley: Biden has a long history of gaffes. How did last night’s mix-up—in which he referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the president of Mexico—compare with his broader history of speaking in public?
David Graham: Confusing Sisi for Andrés Manuel López Obrador is the sort of gaffe that is classic Biden. In any other setting, people might have just rolled their eyes.
It was just so damaging last night because this press conference was called for Biden to show that his memory is good, that he is sharp, that the special counsel’s report was nonsense. It was really the one place where he didn’t want to make this kind of gaffe, and he did. So now that’s the headline from the event, not “Biden Comes Out Swinging.”
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have a history of mental slipups and confusions and incoherence. In both cases, it seems to be exacerbated by age. But I think it’s very hard—in both cases—for the public to really tell how much is about age and how much is just who they are.
Lora: This press conference followed the release of a special-counsel report that cleared Biden of the threat of charges in the classified-documents case. Could you walk me through why Biden was being investigated?
David: In 2022, the FBI found classified documents in Trump’s possession at Mar-a-Lago. After that, there was this string of discoveries of classified documents. Mike Pence had some; Joe Biden had some. Biden self-reported these documents and turned them over, and the Justice Department launched the special-counsel investigation.
It doesn’t seem comparable to the Trump case, where we have extensive alleged obstruction and a huge number of documents. But the DOJ wanted to show that they were not giving preferential treatment, so Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special prosecutor to look into Biden. And over months of investigation, what Special Counsel Robert Hur found is that Biden was sloppy with the way he handled these documents—he shouldn’t have had them, and they shouldn’t have been stored the way they were. But Hur recommended no charges against Biden, saying there was insufficient evidence to convict Biden of a willful act.
Lora: Robert Hur worked as a U.S. attorney in Maryland from 2018 to 2021—and was appointed to that role by Trump. To what extent was that fact relevant to this investigation?
David: That is basically why he was selected to investigate this case. Garland has been determined to restore the impression of the Justice Department as not subject to political interference. He seemed to figure that assigning a Trump appointee would demonstrate that the investigation was unbiased. It’s a double-edged sword: That a Trump appointee gave a recommendation of no charges may, on the one hand, lend the outcome more credence. On the other hand, Biden allies are now saying that because Hur is a Trump appointee, the report is biased and political and totally out of line.
Lora: Even though the report recommended no charges, its characterization of Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” is pretty damning. Why do you think that description was included in the report?
David: One calculation the prosecutors have to make when they want to bring charges is whether they can get a conviction. In this case, what Hur’s report is saying is: We could potentially bring charges in this case, but we think that a jury wouldn’t convict him. And one reason the jury wouldn’t convict him is that they would see him as a sympathetic defendant and, in particular, as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
There is some legal relevance. I don’t think it is out of place in the report, but it did strike me, reading the report, that they went really hard on it.
Lora: What has been the Biden camp’s response to the report’s findings?
David: In a letter attached to the report, Biden’s attorneys take issue with some of the legal analysis, but what they really seethe about is the depiction of Biden. They say the report’s characterization of Biden’s memory lapses is not the same as its characterization of instances when witnesses in the case didn’t recall things. And they suggest that it’s inappropriate and biased and prejudicial.
Lora: What might all of this mean for Biden’s campaign?
David: Democrats are freaking out right now. There are anonymous quotes floating around and stories of a Democrat saying that it’s the worst day of Biden’s presidency. I understand why: Biden’s biggest liability in this election seems to be the impression among voters that he is too old, that he’s lost a step, that he just doesn’t have the vigor for the job. When the conservative press or even voters talk about Biden’s age, it’s sort of atmospheric. But when it’s in an official report like this, the mainstream press is going to cover it really effusively. That puts the issue of his age into the spotlight and makes it unavoidable for Biden, who has so far tried to push it to the side.
I have not seen this level of panic from Democrats so far in this election, even as Biden consistently trails in the polls. And part of that is just that age is perceived as his greatest weakness. It is a bad day for Biden, but I think it’s really hard for anybody to calibrate just how bad it is when it is so fresh. Any confident predictions about the political importance of all this, 24 hours out, are not worth the pixels they’re printed in.
Related:
Today’s News
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered his forces to plan an evacuation of Rafah, a southern city in Gaza near the Egyptian border, ahead of the Israeli military’s expected invasion.
- In an interview with the ousted Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, Russian President Vladimir Putin called on the United States to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine. He also indicated the possibility of prisoner-exchange negotiations for the Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been imprisoned in Russia since last March.
- Yesterday, Donald Trump won Nevada’s Republican caucuses. He was the only major candidate to compete after Nikki Haley skipped the caucuses and ran in the state’s symbolic presidential primary instead, where she lost to a “none of these candidates” option.
Dispatches
- The Books Briefing: The graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier, best known for her memoirs about her preteen years, is beloved for the way she captures the anxiety of growing up, Gal Beckerman writes.
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Evening Read
How a Playwright Became One of the Most Incisive Social Critics of Our Time
By Thomas Chatterton Williams
In the summer of 2020, the playwright Michael R. Jackson received an unusual message from a fan of A Strange Loop, his musical about a gay Black man’s path to creative self-awareness through the process of writing a musical about a gay Black man’s path to creative self-awareness. “Can I buy you a bulletproof vest?” the fan inquired over Instagram.
Jackson, who had just won a Pulitzer Prize for A Strange Loop and lived on a perfectly safe street in Upper Manhattan, had no more conceivable use for body armor or handouts than the next man. He told me about the proposal several months ago, over steak frites at Soho House, stressing its absurdity and presumptuousness. “Ur life matters so much. Ur writing matters so much. This is the most available and direct way I can think of protecting ur life and ur future plays,” the fan had explained.
Read the full article.
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Read. Adelle Waldman’s new novel, Help Wanted, explores workers’ precarity in an upstate shopping warehouse.
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Stephanie Bai contributed to this newsletter.
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