Leaked audio shared by Axios from President Joe Biden’s 2023 interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur has re-ignited serious questions about his mental sharpness, especially as he struggled to remember when his own son died and when Donald Trump was elected president.
In one moment, Biden tries to recall the death of his son, Beau: “My son. Is either been deployed or is dying. And so… What was happening though?”
“What’s much about dying? May 30, 2015, he died,” said Biden. “May 2015. I think it’s 2015. I’m not sure the months are, but I think that was it.”
BIDEN STRUGGLES WITH WORDS, KEY MEMORIES IN LEAKED AUDIO FROM SPECIAL COUNSEL HUR INTERVIEW
Prominent liberals defended Biden’s “strong mental acuity” after Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report called out the leader’s “poor memory.” (Nicole Neri/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Beau Biden passed away from brain cancer on May 30, 2015, at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He was 46.
In the audio, Biden also mixes up the year of Trump’s 2016 victory: “Trump gets elected in November of 2017. 2016. 2016. So… That’s when we left office, January of 2017. But that’s when Trump gets sworn in manually.”
The fumbling recollections are part of a six-hour interview that Hur used to support his conclusion that Biden’s memory was “significantly limited.”
The White House kept the audio under wraps at the time as critical moments in Biden’s own life and in recent American history appeared to be completely out of reach for the former president.
AXIOS REPORTER PUSHES BACK ON BIDEN’S DENIAL OF MENTAL DECLINE, SAYING WHITE HOUSE INSIDERS DISAGREE
WASHINGTON, DC – MARCH 12: Former special counsel Robert K. Hur testifies before the House Judiciary Committee on March 12, 2024 in Washington, DC. Hur investigated U.S. President Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified documents and published a final report with contentious conclusions about Biden’s memory. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
The conversation, part of a two-day interview in October 2023, led Hur to describe Biden as a “well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.”
On Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle Friday night, host Laura Ingraham put it bluntly: “This is the biggest scandal that I remember in recent political history: that this man was allowed to continue as the commander in chief of the world’s greatest superpower.”
President Joe Biden speaks during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, July 25, 2023. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Panelist Francey Hakes added, “I’m not sure Joe Biden was capable of ordering dinner for himself, much less ordering airstrikes or anything else the commander in chief might have to do.”
As Ingraham said later in the segment, “We still don’t really know who was making the tough calls. It obviously wasn’t the man we heard on that tape.”
