When a prominent Democrat loses CNN, they know they’re in trouble.
Or at least, they should.
Questions about President Joe Biden’s age and mental acuity have been swirling for some time now, but I’ve got to believe that even he knows he’s in rough shape after a CNN fact check noted “three false claims” the president made during Thursday night’s news conference — a conference that even the left-leaning Axios called a “presidential debacle.”
CNN said that Biden “forcefully” argued against Hur’s description of Biden’s failing memory, but then made “repeatedly inaccurate” statements during the media event — which I suppose means that, if we take his word that his memory is solid, the president is a flat-out liar. And a bad one, at that.
According to CNN, Biden made at least three important false claims Thursday, including claims about the type of information found at his residence, how it was stored and what classified information he had shared with the ghostwriter of his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad.”
Biden said that he could “guarantee” that he passed on no classified information to Mark Zwonitzer, who ghostwrote the book. When a reporter said during his news conference that Hur reported that he had, Biden denied it.
“No, they did not say that,” Biden claimed. “He did not say that.”
Except that he did.
“Hur did say that,” CNN confirmed, writing explicitly that ‘Mr. Biden shared information, including some classified information, from those notebooks with his ghostwriter.’ He elaborated that Biden shared classified information with his ghostwriter by reading ‘nearly verbatim’ from his notebooks ‘on at least three occasions,’ including his ‘notes from meetings in the Situation Room.’
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Hur did acknowledge in his report, however, that there were times when Biden had apparently provided some information but withheld other material he knew to be classified, and that it was possible that in some cases Biden didn’t know the material in question was classified.
It wasn’t immediately known whether any of that material made it into the book, but Hur said he had not heard any allegations that it had, CNN reported.
Biden also claimed that all of the material found in his residence had been “in filing cabinets that were either locked or able to be locked,” according to the outlet.
Except that it wasn’t.
“The special counsel’s report says that while some of the classified documents were found in cabinet drawers in Biden’s Delaware home, other classified documents, about Afghanistan, were found in an ‘unsealed’ and ‘badly damaged’ box sitting in his garage alongside an assortment of other items the special counsel described as ‘household detritus,’” CNN said in refutation of Biden’s false claim. “The report includes a photo of the box.”
Other documents were found in “unlocked drawers in the office and basement den” in Biden’s home, according to Hur’s report as cited by the outlet.
Finally, Biden claimed that he only had possession of material that had been classified at the lower levels of sensitivity.
Except that he didn’t.
“Hur reported the discovery of documents in Biden’s possession that had markings identifying them as ‘Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information,’ a very high level of classification — plus handwritten notebooks from Biden’s time as vice president that weren’t marked as classified but that ‘contain information that remains classified up to the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level,’” CNN reported.
“The unauthorized disclosure of this information, both today and in 2017 when Mr. Biden was no longer vice president, reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security,” Hur wrote in his report.
CNN did, of course, attempt to soften the blow by comparing Biden’s illegal retention of classified material with that of former President Donald Trump’s — who did, allegedly hold on to more material. But still, the fact that CNN, which typically acts as the media arm of the Democratic Party, was even willing to fact check their fearless leader in the first place would seem to indicate that Biden’s days are numbered.
The only question is whether the 81-year-old Biden retains the perspicuity to realize it.
