IANS | 11 Feb, 2024
US President Joe Biden's re-election campaign managers launched a
frontal attack on his predecessor Donald Trump's confused state of mind
and slurring in his speech in retaliation to his appointee counsel
Robert Hur alleging Biden suffered from memory loss, even about his
son's death.
The Biden-Harris HQ account shared multiple clips
from Trump's speech at the National Rifle Association (NRA) presidential
forum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Friday showing him in a confused
state of mind and slurring in his speech, media reports said.
The
attacks were a retaliatory move against Trump-appointed Special Counsel
Robert Hur's 388-page review of Biden following sensitive materials
being found at the President's private residence in Delaware and former
office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., in December 2022
and January 2023.
Though Hur said Biden's lapses did not want
criminal charges but cited concerns about the President's cognitive
abilities; it was said that Biden's memory was significantly limited and
that he struggled to remember basic and key facts.
Trump seized
the opportunity taking off from Hur's report saying that the 81-year-old
President's decline meant he was unfit to run for the second term as
President.
Biden's team hit back raising similar concerns about
Trump. In recent months, the 77-year-old has described Hungary's Prime
Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Turkey; referred to Nikki Haley
as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; and also suggested that former
President Barack Obama was still in office, media reports said.
Biden's
campaign team appeared to highlight the apparent cognitive issues
surrounding Trump, including slurring his words during his speech at the
NRA convention. While sharing one clip, Biden's team said that a
"confused" Trump says he got 100 per cent of the vote in the recent GOP
primary in the Virgin Islands, which is "off by about 26 per cent".
Another
short video shared by Biden's team appears to show Trump slurring while
he pronounced the word "subsidiaries". Other clips also suggest the
former President got distracted while telling a bizarre story about
marbles; that a confused Trump appears to brag how much he did for China
as President; and that he did not know it was a Friday while he was
delivering his talk at the NRA event.
Newsweek reported that
Biden's team included a "list of lies" Trump told during his
Pennsylvania speech in addition to "slurring his words, confusing what
time and day it is, and pledging to repeal every gun safety law".
Among
the most damning claims from Hur's classified documents report was how
Biden did not remember, "even within several years," when his son Beau
died of brain cancer in 2015.
Hur said that, while answering
questions as part of the probe in October, Biden also couldn't remember
when he was Vice-President, and had to ask when his first term ended and
began.
Hur had said that even if he wasn't in office, it would be
hard to secure a conviction as the Democrat would likely present
himself to a jury as a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a
poor memory".
"It would be difficult to convince a jury that they
should convict him -- by then a former President well into his 80's--of a
serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur wrote.
Biden rejected the criticism of Hur, saying during a heated press conference on Thursday: "My memory is fine."
Biden also criticised the special counsel for suggesting he could not remember the year his son died.
"The
simple truth is I sat for five hours of interviews over two days of
events, going back 40 years. At the same time, I was managing an
international crisis," Biden said, in reference to the Palestinian
military group Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7.
"Their task
was to make a decision about whether to move forward with charges in
this case. That was their decision to make. That's the counsel's
decision to make. That's his job. And they decided not to move forward."
"For any extraneous commentary, they don't know what they're talking about. It has no place in this report," Biden said .
"The bottom line is: The matter is now closed."