Former President Joe Biden’s administration was blasted on social media following a report from Axios featuring audio from Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, depicting the former president’s memory lapses and prolonged pauses.
Newsweek reached out to Biden’s office via online form and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) via email Friday night for comment.
Why It Matters
The interview was conducted in 2023, amid the special counsel’s investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents. President Donald Trump was also under investigation for accusations of improper handling of classified documents after his first term.
Ultimately, Hur recommended Biden not be prosecuted, calling the former president a “sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.” Democrats and Republicans alike strongly reacted to Hur’s findings, as some called his remarks out of line and others griped with his conclusion.
The obtained audio comes at the end of a harsh week for the former president, as excerpts from CNN‘s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson’s new book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again were published by multiple media outlets.
Biden dropped out of the 2024 presidential race in late July, following a disastrous debate performance against then-Republican presidential nominee Trump. Biden repeatedly stared at Trump and made halting statements where he appeared to lose his train of thought. Biden later said he had “a bad, bad night.”
Questions swirled about his mental acuity and possible decline as the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris fielded questions about his cognitive ability in the final months of his presidency.
What To Know
In the Axios report, Biden can be heard taking elongated pauses, stumbling on key dates like the death of his son Beau Biden, and not finishing his train of thought.
A clock can also be heard in the background, marking every second of elapsing time between thoughts.
The interviews were held over a two-day period, with Axios reporting that the former president sounded “much more engaged and vigorous” on day two.
After the audio was made public, Republicans jumped to react to the news on social media.
GOP Congressman James Comer of Kentucky said on X, formerly Twitter, on Friday that, “Democrats told you the Biden Hur audio tapes didn’t matter. Democrats told you Special Counsel Robert Hur was interfering in an election. Democrats told you over and over that Joe Biden was ‘sharp.’ The cover-up of Joe’s mental decline is a scandal of historic proportions.”
The GOP Oversight Committee also reacted on X: “When we subpoenaed the Hur audio tapes, Democrat Jamie Raskin claimed the ‘format of the medium’ doesn’t matter. Reading 250 pages doesn’t capture the mumbling, confusion, or long silences. The tape speaks for itself.”
Hur’s transcript of the interviews was released in March 2024.
Republican Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona also said on X Friday, “Joe Biden was a demented, feeble, old man during his presidency. Who was running the country?”
Steve Guest, Senator Ted Cruz‘s former communications adviser, reacted to the audio on X Friday, saying, “Joe Biden’s brain was pudding as president and his team covered it up.”
Guest continued, “There are people with advanced dementia in nursing homes whose nurses can hold more coherent conversations with them than Robert Hur had with Joe Biden.”
In Biden’s 2024 annual physical, his doctor Kevin O’Connor said that Biden was “a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.”
Axios also reports that during the interview, Biden went off on tangents about riding in a Corvette with Jay Leno, the type of wood and moldings that were in renovated rooms of his house and how former President Barack Obama advised him not to run for office in 2016.
In the audio, Biden’s attorney Bob Bauer can also be heard coming to his defense, saying after a question that “I just really would like to avoid, for the purpose of a clean record, getting into speculative areas.”
What People Are Saying
Biden spokesperson Kelly Scully, to Axios: “The transcripts were released by the Biden administration more than a year ago. The audio does nothing but confirm what is already public.”
Former Obama adviser David Axelrod posted to X on Thursday: “A lot of folks now are acknowledging what was obvious then: A guy, who was already showing frailties and would have been closer to 90 than 80 by the end of his second term should not have run for the hardest job on the planet. Never was going to end well.”
Axelrod continued, “Next to being President, the pressure of running for it is almost as hard. The idea that an 81-year-old man, already limited, could handle both–and then serve another four years–always was nuts. And the people closest to him did him no favor by not telling him the truth.”
What Happens Next
It is unclear whom the Democrats will rally behind as their next leader amid the party’s uncertain direction at the moment.