Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. was even more demented than we knew.
Last night, excerpts leaked from Biden's October 2023 interview with Robert Hur, the federal prosecutor who investigated him for possessing classified documents.
They are awful. They show a man in severe cognitive decline. Biden couldn't recall even basic facts, like when elections are held. Yes, Joe Biden - who had lusted for the presidency his entire life - thought Donald Trump had won in November 2017, not 2016. It wasn't a verbal slip. He didn't know. An aide had to correct him.
BIDEN REPEATEDLY SAYS 'I DON'T REMEMBER' REGARDING CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS IN NEWLY RELEASED HUR INTERVIEW AUDIO
Even that summary doesn't capture Biden's struggles.
What he says is bad. How he says it is worse. His voice is weak and whispery. He goes silent for stretches, loses his train of thought, offers oddly emotional asides about his son Beau - though he could not remember when Beau died. He seems not to remember being vice president; he speaks of being a senator and then jumps to running for president.
In the end, the classified documents investigation went nowhere. (Like the similar case involving Donald Trump, it shouldn't have). But along the way, Hur - a well-respected prosecutor who had been the U.S. Attorney for Maryland in Trump's first term - discovered something far more important: proof of Biden's incapacity.
The Hur interview is so crucial because Biden and his handlers went to such lengths to protect Biden from press or public scrutiny even before the 2020 election.
Biden used teleprompters for his speeches, of course. His press conferences were rare and closely scripted. He had been told what questions would be asked in advance. Biden's few unscripted, live interactions visible to the public generally came when he left the White House to walk to Marine One. He would occasionally stumble over to the "gaggle" of reporters yelling questions at him and speak for a few seconds.
Hur's interview with Biden was likely the only time during Biden's entire presidency when he faced lengthy questioning he could not control. It shows why Biden and his handlers tried so hard to avoid similar situations.
Hur wrote in his report on the investigation last year that Biden was "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." The audio suggests that description was kind.
You wouldn't trust the guy in this interview to drive to the grocery store.
Biden had the nuclear codes.
Still worse, Hur interviewed Biden in 2023. If Biden and the people around him had had their way, he would have been president through January 2029. The interview suggests he'll be nearly vegetative by then - if he lives that long.
When the Justice Department released Hur's report on his investigation in February 2024, the legacy media immediately downplayed its importance and attacked Hur's motives.
"In what is supposedly a legal document, these inclusions certainly looked gratuitous-to say the least," the New Yorker wrote in an article about Biden's "righteous fury" over the report.
Two days later, the Washington Post would claim in a headline Hur had a "five-hour face-off" with Biden and write:
"Hur's description of Biden's demeanor as that of a "well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory" would infuriate Biden's aides, who saw it as sharply at odds with what occurred as the president sat for voluntary questioning."
Sharply at odds, huh?
I have written before about the media's dereliction of duty in covering Biden's decline, both before and after the Hur report, which continued until his disastrous June 27 debate in Atlanta made covering for him impossible. And I will come back to the media's failure. Hur's report made clear that Biden's cognitive impairment was severe and the White House was covering it up. That scheme should have been the story of the 2024 campaign from the moment the report became public.
This is not 20/20 hindsight on my part. On Feb. 9, 2024, the day the report came out, I wrote that it actually might be WORSE for Biden than an actual indictment.
Most of the media looked the other way, even as Biden's flubs and lapses visibly worsened in the spring of 2024 despite the protective cocoon around him. But the legacy media is only the second-most important villain here.
It was Biden and the people around him, most notably his wife Jill and son Hunter, who insisted that he was fit to serve, and would continue to be until he was 86. Both Jill and Hunt had their reasons. Jill's lust for the trappings of power would be almost comic in its nakedness if it weren't so dangerous; Hunter has champagne taste and a beer budget (or, more accurately in his case, cocaine taste and a meth budget).
But, of course, all of them, including Biden, knew the truth. If they hadn't, they wouldn't have gone to such great lengths to hide it.
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Imagine if Biden had won. Imagine if he had somehow found his way through his debates with Trump and then gone back to the presidential cocoon. Imagine if the media had insisted through Election Day that the videos showing his decline were merely "cheap fakes" - as it did throughout the spring. We'd be approaching a Constitutional crisis. Our system is not parliamentary; it has no way to replace an unfit President quickly or easily. And in running for a second term when he did not have to, Biden showed that he would not give up power unless he was forced to do so.
Robert Hur spoke truth to power. He's a hero.
