W.J. Astore

America desperately needs a new generation of leaders

President Biden sees dead people. Recently, Biden resuscitated François Mitterand, the former leader of France who died in 1996. He’s made references to Helmut Kohl as being Germany’s leader in 2021 (he died in 2017). Yesterday, he tried to reassure Americans his memory is just fine; it didn’t go well, as CNN reported this morning:

President Biden in a speech forcefully rejected what he said were inappropriate and incorrect statements about his memory lapses. But just minutes after defending his cognition, the president misspoke and called President of Egypt Abdel Fattah al-Sisi the “president of Mexico,” a moment that undercut his forceful pushback against the report.

The report CNN is referring to is by a special counsel who investigated Biden’s illegal holding of classified information. The special counsel decided not to charge or prosecute Biden, partly because he believed a jury would sympathize with the president, seeing him as an old, forgetful man who probably made an honest mistake due to his deteriorating memory and cognitive skills.

Here’s how the British Guardian reported this yesterday:

Special counsel worried jurors would see Biden ‘as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory’

Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that he was concerned jurors would not believe that Joe Biden “willfully” kept classified documents, and that was one of the reasons why he does not think the president should face charges.

“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,” Hur writes.

“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Hur wrote that: “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. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully – that is, with intent to break the law – as the statute requires.”

Special counsel Robert Hur wrote that in an interview last year, Joe Biden struggled to recall key chapters in his personal and professional life:

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?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he “had a real difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama.

Biden’s lack of ability to remember things would make it hard to prosecute him, Hur said:

We also expect many jurors to be struck by the place where the Afghanistan documents were ultimately found in Mr. Biden’s Delaware home: in a badly damaged box in the garage, near a collapsed dog crate, a dog bed, a Zappos box, an empty bucket, a broken lamp wrapped with duct tape, potting soil, and synthetic firewood.

A reasonable juror could conclude that this is not where a person intentionally stores what he supposedly considers to be important classified documents, critical to his legacy. Rather, it looks more like a place a person stores classified documents he has forgotten about or is unaware of. We have considered – and investigated – the possibility that the box was intentionally placed in the garage to make it appear to be there by mistake, but the evidence does not support that conclusion.

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Now, it’s certainly possible that some of Biden’s memory lapses were tactical in nature, i.e. better to say “I don’t remember” rather than to lie or admit a mistake that could lead to criminal charges. Still, there’s been plenty of evidence, over the last several years, that Biden is under increasing mental and physical strain due to his age, not surprising for a president in his early eighties.

My criticism is not so much directed at Biden as the DNC and media sites like MSNBC that tell us that Biden is doing just fine, that he’s still on top of his game, that we shouldn’t worry at all about reelecting a president who would be 86 at the end of his term.  That, based on the evidence before us, is total BS.

Also, my criticism of Biden and his age-related gaffes does not imply an endorsement of Trump.  Far from it. Trump is no spring chicken; though four years younger than Biden, Trump has a family history of dementia and recently confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi.

Outspoken as usual, Caitlin Johnstone may have put it best: “A Dementia Patient Is President Because It Doesn’t Matter Who The President Is.” Real change in America will have to come from us. The so-called Deep State isn’t about to allow the election of anyone with fresh perspectives and a truly populist agenda.

America desperately needs a new generation of political leadership. Both Biden and Trump should be passing the torch to younger public servants who actually want to serve the working and middle classes. The rich, after all, can take care of themselves.