New York: US President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign managers launched a frontal attack on his predecessor Donald Trump’s confused state of mind and slurring in his speech in retaliation to his appointee counsel Robert Hur alleging Biden suffered from memory loss, even about his son’s death.
The Biden-Harris HQ account shared multiple clips from Trump’s speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) presidential forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Friday showing him in a confused state of mind and slurring in his speech, media reports said.
The attacks were a retaliatory move against Trump-appointed Special Counsel Robert Hur’s 388-page review of Biden following sensitive materials being found at the President’s private residence in Delaware and former office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., in December 2022 and January 2023.
Though Hur said Biden’s lapses did not want criminal charges but cited concerns about the President’s cognitive abilities; it was said that Biden’s memory was significantly limited and that he struggled to remember basic and key facts.
Trump seized the opportunity taking off from Hur’s report saying that the 81-year-old President’s decline meant he was unfit to run for the second term as President.
Biden’s team hit back raising similar concerns about Trump. In recent months, the 77-year-old has described Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Turkey; referred to Nikki Haley as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and also suggested that former President Barack Obama was still in office, media reports said.
Biden’s campaign team appeared to highlight the apparent cognitive issues surrounding Trump, including slurring his words during his speech at the NRA convention. While sharing one clip, Biden’s team said that a “confused” Trump says he got 100 per cent of the vote in the recent GOP primary in the Virgin Islands, which is “off by about 26 per cent”.
Another short video shared by Biden’s team appears to show Trump slurring while he pronounced the word “subsidiaries”. Other clips also suggest the former President got distracted while telling a bizarre story about marbles; that a confused Trump appears to brag how much he did for China as President; and that he did not know it was a Friday while he was delivering his talk at the NRA event.
Newsweek reported that Biden’s team included a “list of lies” Trump told during his Pennsylvania speech in addition to “slurring his words, confusing what time and day it is, and pledging to repeal every gun safety law”.
Among the most damning claims from Hur’s classified documents report was how Biden did not remember, “even within several years,” when his son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.
Hur said that, while answering questions as part of the probe in October, Biden also couldn’t remember when he was Vice-President, and had to ask when his first term ended and began.
Hur had said that even if he wasn’t in office, it would be hard to secure a conviction as the Democrat would likely present himself to a jury as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.
“It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former President well into his 80’s–of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness,” Hur wrote.
Biden rejected the criticism of Hur, saying during a heated press conference on Thursday: “My memory is fine.”
Biden also criticised the special counsel for suggesting he could not remember the year his son died.
“The simple truth is I sat for five hours of interviews over two days of events, going back 40 years. At the same time, I was managing an international crisis,” Biden said, in reference to the Palestinian military group Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7.
“Their task was to make a decision about whether to move forward with charges in this case. That was their decision to make. That’s the counsel’s decision to make. That’s his job. And they decided not to move forward.”
“For any extraneous commentary, they don’t know what they’re talking about. It has no place in this report,” Biden said .
“The bottom line is: The matter is now closed.”
(IANS)
