Special counsel Robert Hur was charged with investigating Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified information. Hur’s decision not to charge Biden with any crimes was based largely on his conclusion that in a potential trial, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as
he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
As even the Democratic Party’s stenographers at NBC News observed, it was tough enough for Biden to reassure voters about his health before Hur’s report hit like a thunderclap Thursday afternoon, prompting members of his own party to question whether he could remain the nominee in November.
“It’s a nightmare,” said a Democratic House member who asked to speak anonymously to provide a frank assessment, adding that “it weakens President Biden electorally, and Donald Trump would be a disaster and an authoritarian.”
“For Democrats, we’re in a grim situation.”
For no kidding evidence of just how grim a situation Democrats are in check this video complied by the Republican National Committee.
Just in last week alone Biden twice referred to conversations he’s had as president with foreign leaders who’ve long since died. In his remarks Thursday night defending his competency, while talking about the war in Gaza, he referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as being the head of Mexico. White House press aides have downplayed such lapses as the sort of mistake anyone in public life can make, observed NBC News.
However, the Hur report strips away the defenses that Biden’s press operation has used to protect him and raises fresh doubts about whether Biden is up to the rigors of the presidency, or another campaign, Democratic strategists said in near continuous weekend interviews.
Asked by NBC News if Hur’s report changes the calculus for Democrats who expect Biden to be the party’s nominee, one strategist said: “How the f--- does it not?”
While Democrats are alternately wringing their hands about Biden’s failing mental acuity and pounding the table denying it’s a problem we have another beef with Special Counsel Hur’s report – the part where he characterizes Biden as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man.”
Joe Biden has been playing that part in public for a long time, but the reality is he is not-well-meaning, sympathetic or even a nice man.
As Jonathan Leaf documented in a 2020 article for the American Conservative, Biden has long lied about his origins and upbring to gain sympathy. He claimed that his family were ordinary coal miners, regular folk who had been unfairly disadvantaged by economic circumstances. But Biden’s background in Pennsylvania’s anthracite country was monied. His father’s family hadn’t been miners but rather oil company owners. Nonetheless, in many speeches Biden suggested that his forebears had been so destitute that they had only rarely come up from underground to see the light of day and play an occasional game of football. In the British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock speech that Biden plagiarized, that had referred to soccer. While Biden had played football, noted Mr. Leaf, it was at a private Catholic school that his parents had paid to send him to. The speech was about how some people wrongly start out at the bottom, and he had used it to mislead people into thinking that he was one of them.
During his first run for President reporters also discovered that Biden had failed a course at Syracuse Law School because he had stolen a paper from a Fordham Law Review article. Five pages of the paper were taken word for word. Showing impressive chutzpah, Biden said that this was unintentional. Biden also claimed that he had graduated in the top half of his law school and had received a full scholarship. In fact, his scholarship was only partial, and he had graduated 76th out of a class of 85 students.
Editor’s Note: One of Biden’s Syracuse law school contemporaries with whom we were acquainted alleged that Biden also plagiarized his work while a student. Unfortunately, we can’t revisit that claim since our interlocutor, the son of a New York Supreme Court judge, has since died.
Mr. Leaf also reminded us that Biden spoke frequently during that race of his experiences marching for equality during the Civil Rights era. This, too, was a fabrication. And when confronted about these lies, he challenged the reporters who asked him about them, saying that he had done his part by running for office, asking them what they had done for Civil Rights.
In addition, Biden had managed to avoid service in Vietnam by claiming that he suffered from asthma—even though he had been a star halfback and wide receiver in high school.
Nor did all these revelations shame him into leaving the race. Instead, he held a press conference in which he insisted that he was going to continue with his campaign, and he only dropped out a week later when it became clear that his persistent lying had defined his candidacy.
There’s a lot more in Jonathan Leaf’s must-read 2020 article for the American Conservative, including a reminder of how Biden used the destruction of Judge Robert Bork (not mentioned is the near-destruction of Clarence Thomas) to revive his standing in the Democratic Party.
The bottom line: Far from being “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man,” Joe Biden’s record shows him to be a shabby and disreputable man. It is not an exaggeration to say that it presents the picture of a scoundrel and serial liar unfit for the presidency long before his mental decline became so pronounced that a biased Leftwing media can’t ignore it any longer.
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