When Special Counsel Robert Hur declined to charge President Joe Biden with felonies related to the mishandling of classified documents last month, Hur found the commander-in-chief too senile to face a jury conviction.
“Biden,” Hur said, “would likely present himself to the jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The president certainly presented himself as old in the final State of the Union address of his first term Thursday night, but certainly not “well-meaning.”
Biden began the election-year speech by depicting Republicans as violent extremists complicit in the Capitol riot of three years ago. Meanwhile, far-left pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked the streets of D.C. and attempted to obstruct the presidential motorcade Thursday night.
“My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about Jan. 6,” Biden said, declaring 2020 objections to electoral certification — which Democrats have made for decades — the “gravest threat to U.S. democracy since the Civil War.”
The first part of the speech also featured outright threats to the Supreme Court two years after the high bench overturned the 50-year abortion precedent in Roe v. Wade.
“With all due respect justices,” Biden said while staring down at them in the House chamber, “women are not without electoral or political power… you’re about to realize just how much.”
The 81-year-old president went on to deliver an hour-long mumbling rant in some futile attempt to reassure voters of his age and aptitude to command the Oval Office.
Fox News Chief Political Analyst Brit Hume said immediately following the speech that Biden did little to assuage doubts about the president’s age by coming off as “an angry old man.” Federalist Senior Editor David Harsanyi pointed out on X that episodes of screaming are not uncommon in patients with Alzheimer’s or dementia.
Former Fox News Host Tucker Carlson called Biden a “dottering old man” who “can’t remember when his son died or when he served as vice president.” Special Counsel Hur’s report found President Biden not only forgot the timeline of his own public service and his son’s death, but also failed to remember details about “appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him.”
Biden’s speech, Carlson said, “was possibly the darkest and most un-American speech ever given by an American president.”
“In fact it wasn’t a speech, it was a rant,” Carlson said, “entirely lacking in decency or generosity to his fellow Americans.”
Biden ended the address by reminding voters of his lifetime in public office.
“I was born amid World War II,” the president said.
Roughly three-quarters of American voters, “including half of Democrats,” told NBC News they have serious reservations about Biden’s mental and physical health to command the White House. Perhaps reminding voters of the president’s age is not the best strategy for re-election.
