Obama's WH physician says special counsel report proves Biden has 'serious issues': 'Worse by the day'
Kyle Morris
Sat, February 10, 2024 at 5:20 PM CST·5 min read
Link:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/obamas-wh-physician-says-special-232026359.html/
[see vids at site link, above]
Texas GOP Rep.
Ronny Jackson, a former
White House physician, said special counsel Robert Hur's report "validates" what he and many have known for years: President Biden has "serious issues."
Hur, who had been tasked with investigating Biden's mishandling of classified documents, described the president in a report this week as appearing like a "sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
"It validates what most of us have known," Jackson told Fox News Digital. "I've been saying since he was candidate Joe Biden that this man is not cognitively fit to be our president, our commander in chief and our head of state. I've been saying that over and over.
"I watched the man every day, you know, in and around the West Wing for eight years when he was vice president. There's a drastic, drastic difference between then and now."
SPECIAL COUNSEL CALLS BIDEN 'SYMPATHETIC, WELL-MEANING, ELDERLY MAN WITH A POOR MEMORY,' BRINGS NO CHARGES
Texas GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician, said special counsel Robert Hur's report "validates" what he and many Americans have known all along: President Biden has "serious issues."
"Go back and look at the videos from whenever he was first vice president and compare them to now. It's not even the same person," Jackson added. "He's got some serious issues. I've been saying that for a long time. Now the report says that — the special counsel report came out and said exactly that. That was a special counsel appointed by the Biden DOJ, and they're saying the same thing that I and many Americans have been saying for a long time now."
Despite the rampant concern over his mental acuity, Biden told Americans from the White House Thursday evening his
memory is "fine" and defended his re-election campaign, saying he is the "most qualified person in this country to be president."
Biden's address to the nation came just hours after Hur released his report, which did not recommend
criminal charges against the president for mishandling classified documents. Those records included classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, among other records related to national security and foreign policy that Hur said included "sensitive intelligence sources and methods."
Addressing Biden's follow-up speech to the report, Jackson said the president made "all kinds of gaffes and proved in real time to the entire world that the report is accurate, that everything we've been thinking for the last three years is accurate.
"He's cognitively unfit to be our commander in chief, and it's going to be a problem for us," Jackson said.
"It's a real national security issue. I mean, it's always been a national security issue, but it's a national security issue that just gets worse by the day.
"We have lots of stuff going on overseas. Our adversaries absolutely, positively have no respect for us. They have no fear of us and our allies. I mean, they don't trust us, and they don't really know if we're going to be there if something bad happens."
President Biden held a press conference Thursday in response to special counsel Robert Hur's description of his age and memory.
Aside from Biden's memory and mental acuity, Jackson said he believes the report "validates that the government has been weaponized for political purposes."
"The Democrats have weaponized the government against Donald Trump. Anybody just has to beat Donald Trump for political purposes — the FBI, the DOJ," he said.
Jackson, who previously served as the White House physician to former presidents
Barack Obama and Donald Trump, faced criticism from Obama for his critique of Biden's cognitive health on the 2020 campaign trail.
BIDEN 'DID NOT REMEMBER WHEN HE WAS VICE PRESIDENT,' WHEN HIS SON BEAU DIED, DURING SPECIAL COUNSEL INTERVIEWS
In his 2022 memoir, Jackson detailed a
"scathing" email he received from Obama about comments he had made on Twitter about Biden's mental state when Biden was a presidential candidate.
"I have made a point of not commenting on your service in my successor’s administration and have always spoken highly of you both in public and in private. You always served me and my family well, and I have considered you not only a fine doctor and service member but also a friend," Obama wrote in the email to Jackson.
"That’s why I have to express my disappointment at the cheap shot you took at Joe Biden via Twitter. It was unprofessional and beneath the office that you once held. It was also disrespectful to me and the many friends you had in our administration. You were the personal physician to the President of the United States as well as an admiral in the U.S. Navy. I expect better, and I hope upon reflection that you will expect more of yourself in the future."
Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, formerly served as White House physician to presidents Obama and Trump.
Last February, after Biden had his annual physical, Jackson told Fox News, "The majority of Americans can see that Biden's
mental health is in total decline. Yet there is no transparency from the White House on what’s going on, if anything, to address this issue and his inability to do his job."
He also took issue at the time with there being no mention of the president undergoing a cognitive test amid his "deteriorating mental health."
"Nowhere in the report was there mention of Biden’s deteriorating mental health," the GOP lawmaker said. "This is alarming, considering I have already sent three letters to the White House demanding that Biden receive a cognitive test and that the results be made public, all of which have been ignored. Everyone can see something is wrong — the cover-up needs to end."
A
Monmouth University poll released in October found that 76% of voters viewed Biden, who was 80 at the time, as "too old" to serve another term, compared to just 48% who said the same about Trump, 77.
Fox News' Brooke Singman contributed to this report.
Original article source: Obama's WH physician says special counsel report proves Biden has 'serious issues': 'Worse by the day'
The impact of Biden's age on the 2024 election
Julie Hyman and
Josh Lipton
Fri, February 9, 2024 at 4:12 PM CST
President Joe Biden will be just a couple of weeks shy of his 82nd birthday when voters head to the polls on November 5, 2024. Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report on Biden's handling of classified documents was released Thursday, admonishing the President for wrongdoing. In the report, Hur described Biden as a
"sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Questions around the ages of both parties' top candidates have been up for debate. Republican frontrunner and twice impeached former President Donald Trump will be 78 when the 2024 election occurs.
Raymond James Washington Policy Analyst and Managing Director Ed Mills joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the candidates' ages and give insight into how his firm investigates presidential candidates and their economic policies to best prepare portfolios.
Mills explains what current issues are at focus in his firm:
"We still have not yet figured out how we'll fund the government after the end of this month, but what we have been telling folks at Raymond James is that when you look at what they've [Congressional lawmakers] agreed on where the dollar amount is going to end up, we are fading a defense supplemental in the Senate that could add another $95 billion of fiscal spend here. There's an $80 billion tax bill that seems like there's an opportunity to get that done in the Senate. It's overwhelmingly passed the House. When you're adding these things up at the beginning of the year, lots of questions about whether or not there was going to be a fiscal drag, but now we're going to see further fiscal support after the election."
For more expert insight and the latest market action, click
here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Editor's note: This article was written by Nicholas Jacobino
VP Kamala Harris says special counsel’s report on Biden’s handling of classified documents was “politically motivated.”
The Recount
Fri, February 9, 2024 at 8:17 AM CST·1 min read
Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday ripped into the special counsel’s report on President Biden’s handling of classified documents, condemning the stinging characterization of him as an elderly man with poor memory.
“The way that the president's demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts, and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous,” Harris said. “When it comes to the role and responsibility of a prosecutor in a situation like that, we should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw.”
Special counsel Robert Hur’s report, released on Thursday, did not recommend that Biden be charged with a crime, but it described the president as having memory issues during his interview with investigators, saying he “would likely present himself to a jury … as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
The vice president also noted that interviews in the investigation were conducted following the events of October 7 — the day of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel.
“I was in almost every meeting with the president in the hours and days that followed — countless hours with the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the heads of our intelligence community,” Harris said. “The president was in front of and on top of it all, asking questions and requiring that America's military, and intelligence community, and diplomatic community would figure out and know how many people were dead.”
“He was in front of it all,” Harris continued, “coordinating and directing leaders who are in charge of America's national security, not to mention our allies around the globe for days and up until now, months.”
Special counsel surprise triggers Dem worries, White House anger
Brett Samuels
Sat, February 10, 2024 at 11:00 AM CST·5 min read
A special counsel report with a surprise focus on President Biden’s age and memory has deepened Democratic worries about November while infuriating the White House.
Age has long been seen as the 81-year-old Biden’s biggest political liability, and the report from special counsel Robert Hur brought it to the forefront even as it resulted in no charges against Biden for his handling of classified documents.
The White House and many Democrats saw passages in Hur’s report describing Biden as an elderly man with memory problems as a cheap political hit job.
But Democrats also acknowledged the potential for the report to cement damaging perceptions of Biden that could cost him reelection in a likely battle in the fall against former President Trump, who is 77.
“Look, I’m a Biden supporter. And I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours and wet the bed. This is terrible for Democrats. And anybody with a functioning brain knows that,” said Paul Begala, a former Clinton White House adviser, on CNN.
“What you do is attack. Change the subject. You can’t unring the bell,” Begala added.
Biden himself added to the perceptions that he may have lost a step throughout the past week.
On Sunday, he confused French President Emmanuel Macron with François Mitterrand, who served as president of France from 1981-95 and died in 1996. Macron has been in office since 2017.
On Wednesday, Biden confused former German Chancellor Angela Merkel with Helmut Kohl, who served as chancellor from 1982-88 and died in 2017.
On Thursday, Biden used a press conference to lash out at Hur’s report and dismiss concerns about his memory and age. But in response to a question about the humanitarian crisis in Hamas, he mistakenly referred to Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”
Biden and his team have said it’s valid for voters to consider his age, but to judge him on his record of achievements and ability to handle the rigors of the job. In the wake of Hur’s report, the White House and Biden’s allies got much more aggressive.
Vice President Harris passionately defended Biden on Friday and ripped Hur’s report as “politically motivated” and “inappropriate.”
“The way the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts, and clearly politically motivated,” said Harris, who served as California’s attorney general.
Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said on a call organized by the Biden campaign to address gun violence that Hur’s report was a “smear” full of “cheap shots.”
“Clearly, there was an agenda there. And what’s true is that the president now is going to be our guy,” said Fetterman, who faced questions about his fitness for office during his 2022 Senate campaign after suffering a stroke.
White House spokesperson for oversight Ian Sams blasted the “gratuitous” passages in the report and said that comments made about the president’s age went “beyond the remit of a prosecutor.”
“When the inevitable conclusion is that the facts and the evidence don’t support any charges, you’re left to wonder why this report spends time making gratuitous and inappropriate criticisms of the president,” Sams said during a rare appearance in the White House briefing room on Friday.
Hur — a Republican prosecutor appointed to the role of special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland — offered raw assessments of Biden’s recall abilities. He wrote that Biden presented to investigators as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” He described Biden as having a memory with “significant limitations,” and that “appeared hazy,” and he wrote of a president with “diminished faculties and faulty memory.”
In one particularly harsh passage, the report said Biden struggled to remember the years he served as vice president and the year that his son died, with the latter clearly offending Biden.
“How in the hell dare he raise that,” Biden said in remarks from the White House responding to the report. “Frankly, when I was asked the question I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
Biden’s age has long been a touchy subject for the president and his allies, many of whom believe Trump gets a pass for his verbal slips despite being just a few years younger than Biden.
An NBC News poll published this week found 76 percent of voters, including 54 percent of Democrats, said they had major or moderate concerns when asked whether Biden, 81, has “the necessary mental and physical health to be president for a second term.”
By comparison, the poll found 48 percent of voters had major or moderate concerns about Trump having the mental and physical health to serve a second term.
Republicans were quick to make political hay of Hur’s report, arguing a president whose memory would be a major factor in a hypothetical trial should not be given four more years in the White House.
Nikki Haley, a GOP presidential candidate who has pushed the idea of competency tests for older politicians, suggested without evidence on Friday that some Democrats were already working to replace Biden on the ticket in November.
Some former Biden White House officials saw the Hur report as an opportunity to go on offense and more proactively address concerns about the president’s age and ability to stand up to the rigors of the job.
“The editorializing from the special prosecutor was grossly personal and overtly political, so the president had every right to be angry. His emotion was raw and sincere and voters appreciate displays of humanity like that,” said Michael LaRosa, former press secretary to first lady
Jill Biden and special assistant to President Biden.
LaRosa said that while “of course, it was politically harmful,” Biden can overcome the damage by engaging with the media and doing more interviews. Trump makes himself accessible and “thrives on communication with reporters,” LaRosa noted.
“Questions about the age, they are not made up,” Symone Sanders Townsend, who served as Biden’s press secretary on his 2020 campaign, said on MSNBC. “And because that is something that voters themselves are bringing up, it is something the president has to speak to. And if people just watch Joe Biden, it does speak for itself.”
For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to The Hill.
Fallout from special counsel report creates headache for Biden campaign
CBS News Videos
Sat, February 10, 2024 at 6:14 PM CST
The controversial report from Republican special counsel Robert Hur has sparked new debate about President Biden's age and his decision to seek reelection. In his report, Hur recommended no criminal prosecution regarding President Biden's retention of classified documents, but he did refer to the president's memory at least nine times, describing him as a "well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory." Christina Ruffini has the latest.
