Obsessing Over Age
Once again, the media is head over heels reporting on Biden's age
For the gazillionth time: We get it, he’s an old man!
US media have a lot to cover over the past few days: Trump’s immunity case being tossed out by a DC appeals court, the Colorado eligibility case going to the Supreme Court, Republicans in Congress doing their 180 on a border bill that is an immigration overhaul wishlist of their dreams, the Nevada primary/caucuses. But what was the main focus many media organizations have pounced on? It was the Robert Hur report.
After last January’s news broke that there were classified documents stored in Joe Biden’s office and house, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Robert Hur as the special counsel investigating the matter. When the report was finally released to the public on Thursday, Hur said Biden did not commit any wrongdoing over his handling of classified documents, but it was why he couldn’t do anything wrong that got the media’s attention. By the BBC.
US President Joe Biden didn't mince his words during a surprise news briefing that followed the publication of a report focused on his handling of classified documents from his time as vice-president. The report highlighted memory lapses that included Mr Biden's inability to recall specific years of life events, such as his term as vice-president and the death of his son, Beau. One of the report's most damning passages described Mr Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory". To this, Mr Biden replied: "I am well-meaning, and am elderly. I know what the hell I'm doing. I put this country back on its feet."
Specifically, these are the parts that have highlighted what Hur sees as Biden’s mental incompetency in his report.
“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.”
“Mr. Biden’s memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023.”
“Mr. Biden’s memory also appeared to have significant limitations … Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with [ghostwriter MARK] ZWONITZER from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries. In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. 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?’).”
“For these jurors, Mr. Biden’s apparent lapses and failures in February and April will likely appear consistent with the diminished faculties and faulty memory he showed in Zwonitzer’s interview recordings and in our interview of him.”
Inside the Biden circle, Politico reported gloomy discussions between his aides and supporters that sound like deja vu to a not-so-distant past.
“It felt like a Comey moment for me.”
That was the assessment of a top Biden campaign official watching special counsel ROBERT HUR’s report explode yesterday.
In July 2016, FBI Director JAMES COMEY ripped into HILLARY CLINTON for being “extremely careless” with classified material and noted that there was “evidence of potential violations” of the law. Then he delivered the actual news: “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” In a scathing report, the DOJ’s inspector general later harshly criticized Comey for his actions.
Like Comey, the Biden official argued, Hur put his “thumb on the scale during an election season.”
Critics of the Hur report, like pundit Keith Olbermann, see Hur’s depictions of Biden as completely inappropriate.
OK which atrocity do you want to get enraged about first?
…
[Or,] the fact that a partisan hack appointed by Trump managed to turn his nothing-burger investigation of Biden and the returned documents into Christmas-For-The-Fascists by inserting unwarranted, unjustifiable, indefensible opinions about the president’s memory into it and THAT’S the headline and oh by the way where is the goddamned Attorney General on this?
William Rehnquist's former clerk, Rod Rosenstein's former deputy, and a contributor to The Federalist has enough nerve finding nothing to prosecute but throwing into his report what sounds like a medical opinion about the President's memory but which is really just another Conservative law-breaker whipping out his schlong and putting it on the political scale.
Before we get to Biden’s age problem, let’s get one thing straight with the media. The level of hype and over-reporting is simply astounding. Whether it is CNN, the New York Times, Politico, The Washington Post, and the myriad of other agencies have worked up outsized coverage over age concerns compared to more important news stories. In my suggestion, this story can be listed as the third most important story over things like Trump v. Anderson, the Pakistan elections, or hell, put the Carlson Putin interview in your headlines! The media has been perpetually acting for the past two years like no human on Earth has realized Biden is an old man and is getting older, and it is getting more irritating by the day. The media often likes to ask the question: Why isn’t Biden popular with voters? Maybe the gloomy coverage of Biden’s age and his economic accomplishments may play a factor!
Now to Biden, let’s be fair, the age issue is the greatest liability to his campaign. Under one week, he has confused France’s Emmanuel Macron with the now-dead French president François Mitterrand, Germany’s chancellor Helmut Kohl with Angela Merkel, and in his defiant memory speech Thursday night, confused President El Sisi of Egypt as the president of Mexico.
But as I have pointed out five months ago in this article below, it needs to be compared against the mental record of Donald Trump.
Outsider Insight: He’s Too Old!
Breaking: Joe Biden is old! He’s getting older than he came into office, and is running for president as an old man! Okay, okay, so it’s not breaking news or shocking news that Biden is old. However, the age issue is often brought up sinc…
Since the article was published, Trump confused his rival in the primaries Nikki Haley with former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, mixing up Biden and Obama on who is the current president, confusing Hillary Clinton as his competitor in the 2020 election when it was Joe Biden, claimed a photo of him standing next to E. Jean Carroll (who he raped as proven in a civil case at least twice) was actually his second wife Marla Maples, and repeatedly boasted of his mental competency because he had done a cognitive test.
The difference voters and many should make is not that Biden is as young and energetic, it is contrasting their second nature behind their old age. Yes, Biden is old, but he has done a good job as president when it comes to his record on policies and the economy writ large. Trump, on the other hand, is only three years younger than Biden and wants to transform America into a full-fledged authoritarian state. Oh, and he is freaking insane!
Citing the impeccable Keith Olbermann, he pointed out a poll in October last year that the Biden campaign could use well to their advantage if they get the message, and the message directly correlates to the point I just made in the paragraph above.
The Biden Campaign slogan should literally be “MY OLD MAN CAN BEAT UP YOUR OLD MAN.”
It is the most remarkable, unexpected, startling, counter-intuitive polling data I have ever seen: The future of democracy. The future of the prosecution of Trump. The future of the nation. The future of planetary climate. It may depend on convincing voters NOT that Joe Biden is somehow NOT TOO old but on convincing voters that he and Trump are BOTH TOO OLD. New polling shows 43 percent of Americans BELIEVE they’re BOTH too old and they plan to vote as follows:
Biden 61% Trump 13%
In Pennsylvania it’s Biden 66% Trump 11%! If they’re BOTH too old – Biden wins in a landslide. Just growing the percentage IN Pennsylvania who believe they’re both too old by FIVE percent would flip 110-thousand Trump votes TO BIDEN. And helpfully Trump is not only acting old, he’s acting demented.
In fact, Biden should come out and embrace his old age and poke fun at the problems it brings. Make a few jokes on how everything is younger than he is and he has experienced long-ago history. Just as the media, and more importantly, his opponents, have been hammering the idea that Joe Biden is older than wood, Biden needs to repeatedly mention everywhere he goes that “Yes, I am old. But that other guy is old, and he is a threat to democracy.”
Who knows, voters might even like the new, open Joe Biden.
