White House memo signals Republicans’ attacks on Biden’s memory show ‘they’re afraid’

A new White House memo says Republicans’ attacks on President Biden’s memory show that they are “afraid.”

“President Biden also led Democrats to the best midterm elections for a new incumbent in over 60 years, and to a string of other wins in 2023,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in the Saturday memo. “These are historic accomplishments that President Biden was uniquely capable of realizing – and that he is uniquely capable of building on.”

“And this undeniable record speaks to why it’s no surprise that Republican officials’ continue their desperate – and inadvertently self-undermining – age attacks after many years of failure: they’re afraid of Joe Biden,” the memo continued.

The memo comes in the wake of the release of a special counsel report on the president’s handling of classified documents. The report from special counsel Robert Hur, released Thursday, concluded no charges should be brought against the president, but it noted Biden had problems with memory and recall.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote.

“Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Top Republican leaders have gone after the president following the report’s release, with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and fellow House colleagues Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), saying in a joint statement that Biden is “unfit” for office. 

“Among the most disturbing parts of this report is the Special Counsel’s justification for not recommending charges: namely that the President’s memory had such ‘significant limitations’ that he could not convince a jury that the President held a ‘mental state of willfulness’ that a serious felony requires,” the top Republicans said.