As of: February 9, 2024, 10:18 a.m
By: Stefan Krieger
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US President Joe Biden defends himself against criticism of his health.
His reaction: “I know what the hell I’m doing.”
Washington, DC - It is remarkable that a country like the USA, which has a population of more than 330 million, can most likely only decide between a 77-year-old notorious liar and an 81-year-old old man when electing the next head of state .
As Donald Trump faces countless charges, critical comments in a special counsel report continue to fuel the debate over US President Joe Biden's age and mental abilities.
In response to a question about a quote from the report that said Biden seemed like a "well-meaning, older man with a bad memory," the president replied: "I'm well-meaning, I'm an older man, and I know the hell I'm doing." .
I am the president and I got this country back on its feet.”
Biden does not face criminal charges
Biden, who is seeking re-election for a second term in the US election in November, reacted angrily to a passage in the report that stated that when questioned he could not remember the date of his son Beau Biden's death from cancer in 2015.
“How the hell dare he bring that up?” Biden said.
When he was questioned by investigators about it, he thought: “What the hell does it matter to them?”
Biden pointed out that he had been asked about the documents affair shortly after the war between Israel and the Islamist Palestinian organization Hamas began on October 7th.
At the time he was busy dealing with an “international crisis”.
Joe Biden: How fit is the US President really?
© IMAGO/Samuel Corum
Special Counsel Robert Hur's report found that Biden would not face criminal liability by retaining confidential documents from his vice presidency - actually a win for Biden.
Especially when you consider that his predecessor, Donald Trump, was indicted by the federal judiciary in a much larger documents affair.
However, it was the unflattering assessments of Biden's memory performance that caused a stir.
The investigator used the president's alleged poor memory to argue that a hypothetical jury would never find the president guilty.
Republicans react to report on Biden's health
The opposition Republicans immediately took up these comments.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and other lawmakers said after the report was released that it was “deeply disturbing”: “A man who is too incompetent to be held accountable for mishandling classified documents is certainly unfit to do so Oval Office."
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People in the USA see Biden's old age as a major weakness for the Democrat, who is already the oldest president in US history and repeatedly causes a stir with slips of the tongue and mix-ups.
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Most recently, Biden confused the late former Chancellor Helmut Kohl with the former Chancellor Angela Merkel, and also the late French head of state François Mitterrand with the incumbent Emmanuel Macron.
At the press conference on Thursday evening, Biden made another blunder: He referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as the “Mexican president.”
The Republicans enjoy exploiting Biden's verbal missteps - even though their prospective presidential candidate Trump also repeatedly raises eyebrows with his bizarre statements.
Special Counsel Hur: Biden not as bad as Trump
The Biden documents affair involved confidential documents from his time as President Barack Obama's deputy between 2009 and 2017. The documents were found at the end of 2022 in an office in Washington that was previously used by Biden and then in his private home in Wilmington, Delaware.
Months earlier, at Trump's private residence Mar-a-Lago in Florida, the FBI had confiscated hundreds of confidential documents that the right-wing populist had taken from the White House after his term in office ended in early 2021.
Robert Hur, the special prosecutor responsible for the Biden case, emphasized in his report that there are significant differences between the two affairs.
Biden voluntarily returned the documents and cooperated during the investigation, in contrast to Trump.
Biden welcomed the special counsel's conclusions, even as he took issue with the assessments of his memory.
(skr/afp)