The White House is defending its media strategy of scheduling President Joe Biden for a prime-time address to dispute mental acuity allegations in special counsel Robert Hur‘s report.
But instead of putting the public’s mind at ease with his four-minute remarks and the eight minutes he spent answering questions from reporters, Biden provided more examples of misremembering or misspeaking when he mistook the Egyptian and Mexican presidents during his response to an inquiry about the Israel–Hamas war.
Hur may not have charged Biden despite finding that Biden wilfully retained classified documents and disclosed sensitive information during his 15-month investigation into the president, but the former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney’s almost 400-page report indicted Biden’s memory and exacerbated caricatures related to his mental capacity.
Democrats, such as strategist Jim Manley, were already contending with the conundrum of how Biden and the party should present a positive case to voters before November’s election while being cognizant of the president’s tendency toward mistakes.
But Manley disregarded the idea Biden should not have engaged with reporters until he was rested after a busy day at the White House.
“Given how damaging the special counsel’s language was, the White House had no choice but to put the president out there — and sooner rather than later,” the former aide to the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told the Washington Examiner. “The idea that they should have waited [until] the morning is ridiculous.”
But whether the address and press conference “worked” or not is “a whole other story,” but this is going to “dog them” for the rest of the campaign, according to Manley. Biden’s campaign did not comment on this story.
“They are going to have to figure out a way to deal with it, or we are in deep trouble as we head into November,” Manley said.
Trump has an average 2 percentage point advantage over Biden in hypothetical 2024 polling, 46% to 44%, per RealClearPolitics.
Other Democrats, like former Clinton adviser Paul Begala, have recommended that the party become more aggressive in criticizing Hur as a partisan and underscoring the contrast with Trump, playing offensive as opposed to simply defense.
But Ronald Reagan biographer Craig Shirley asserted Biden, at least, should not “shoot” Hur “down,” particularly after condemning Trump and Republicans for undermining the Justice Department.
“What Biden should have done is a short statement to the nation. Reassuring. Calm. Presidential,” Shirley said. “Then do a short press conference [Friday] morning on the steps of the Rose Garden. Light. Humorous.”
“Reagan always said the best humor was that aimed at one’s self. Biden should have done the same,” he added as the White House cites Reagan’s own handling of classified documents in his diaries. “He did exactly the opposite by being shrill and brittle and combative and defensive. He made a campfire into a bonfire. Now it is thoroughly injected into the culture. Everybody is talking about it and no one feels sorry for him. The issue is out of control.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, in addition to Biden, the White House, and the president’s personal lawyer Bob Bauer, has disparaged Hur’s report while pledging to create a task force to safeguard classified documents during transitions and to consider sharing the transcripts of Biden’s interviews with the special counsel.
“The way that the president’s demeanor was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated,” Harris said Friday. “When it comes to the role and responsibility of a prosecutor, we should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw.
An hour later, during his first on-camera appearance in the White House briefing room, General Counsel’s Office spokesman Ian Sams similarly sharpened his rhetoric, arguing, “We’re in a very pressurized political environment” and “there is pressure to criticize and to make statements that maybe otherwise you wouldn’t make.”
“They see a president who cooperated. They see a president who did the right thing,” Sams said of Biden and public perception. “They can see and understand when people make comments that are gratuitous and they shouldn’t make.”
More broadly, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stood by the White House’s media strategy related to Biden amid criticism of the decision not to hold a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during his trip to Washington, D.C., nor to take part in what has become the traditional pre-Super Bowl sit down, though he has participated in more retail stops on the campaign trail.
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“He did that a couple of times this week, I think about three times, engaging with the press,” Jean-Pierre said. “It’s just something that he does pretty often, and we’re going to try and pick moments. He’s going to, on his own, have moments where he’s going to want to walk over and talk to all of you, as he’s done many times before.”
“We think it’s very important,” she continued. “It’s important to take your questions. It’s important to hear from all of you and hear directly what’s on the mind of the American people, as well as what we believe is on the mind of the American people.”
