Questions about President Biden's age and mental acuity have dogged his entire presidency, but there's been quite an escalation over concerns about his reelection chances following the damning report released this month by Special Counsel Robert Hur.
While Biden maintains his vocal stalwarts across the liberal landscape, many are speaking out about the potential fallout from Hur's report, which revealed that the president couldn't remember key details about his biography like when he was vice president and what year his son Beau died. The report also made the stunning conclusion that Hur could not bring charges against Biden despite his "willful" possession of classified documents because a jury would view him as a "sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory."
The political fallout began quickly at Biden's last-minute primetime press conference where he snapped at several reporters including from CNN and The Washington Post, who asked questions about his age. Biden himself poured gasoline on the fire at the press conference when he mixed up the presidents of Mexico and Egypt while discussing the Israel-Hamas war, adding to his list of recent gaffes pertaining to world leaders.
Former Clinton advisor Paul Begala went viral with his reaction on CNN, saying "I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours crying and wet the bed."
"This is terrible for Democrats. Anybody with a functioning brain knows that," Begala added.
Former Obama adviser and CNN political analyst David Axelrod said the Hur report and Biden's press conference "reinforce [the] meme" of the president's age and that it's a "big barrier" to overcome.
"People don’t give him credit for what he’s done. They blame him for everything that happens and a lot of it has to do with their feelings about his age. So it’s not wise to say to a reporter, ‘That’s your interpretation.’ It’s not. There’s reams of polling material about this," Axelrod said.
Democratic strategist James Carville tore into Biden over his decision to skip the traditional pre-Super Bowl interview, saying to give up such a massive audience is a "sign" that either his staff or the president himself "doesn't have much confidence in you."
"There’s no other way to read this," Carville told CNN before predicting that Biden is "not gonna do" the presidential debates, saying "He is old, I know what it is because I'm almost as old as he is, and it's never gonna get better."
Andrew Yang, one of Biden's former Democratic rivals during the 2020 presidential election and a supporter of Biden's current primary challenger, Rep. Dean Phillips, D-Minn., called out the "palpable difference" he has witnessed between the last election cycle and this one, saying in a recent interview to The Free Press he'd be "stunned" if Biden was able to finish the majority of a second term.
Despite efforts by the Biden campaign to reject the issue of Biden's age, the media is not falling for it. ABC News correspondent Mary Bruce pushed back, saying it "does matter."
"The president is a candidate for another four years, you can't dismiss that," Bruce said during last week's News Literacy Project panel discussion. "Just because you're focused on what's at stake, [that] doesn't negate questions about the president's mental acuity what was said and alleged in that report."
The co-hosts of "The View" indicated Biden isn't capable of handling the general election debates against former President Trump.
"If Biden flubs, they'll be all over him. If Trump flubs, who cares?" Joy Behar said, a sentiment echoed by co-host Sara Haines, who said Biden "can lose in a debate. Trump will not. The people supporting Trump will support him whether he's there or not. Biden makes one mistake and people who are undecided are out."
The New York Times unleashed an avalanche of criticism, crushing Biden in the process. After reporting that the Hur report and Biden's press conference were a "political disaster," the Times editorial board called it a "a dark moment for Mr. Biden’s presidency" and that his constant low profile "has eroded the public’s confidence. He looks as if he is hiding, or worse, being hidden." Times columnist Maureen Dowd similarly urged the president to "ditch the stealth about health," saying "Jill Biden and his other advisers come up with ways to obscure signs of senescence — from shorter news conferences to almost zero print interviews to TV interviews mainly with fawning MSNBC anchors."
Several Times columnists from Michelle Goldberg, David French, Ross Douthat and Ezra Klein have all either floated the idea or explicitly told Biden that he should step aside ahead of the 2024 election.
"I think Biden, as painful as it is, should find his way to stepping down as a hero," Klein said on his podcast. "But the party should help him find his way to that to being the thing that he said he would be in 2020, the bridge to the next generation of Democrats… And then I think Democrats should meet in August at the convention to do what political parties have done at convention so many times before, organize victory."
"Real Time" host Bill Maher also pushed for Biden to be switched out at the DNC convention.
"If a guy says 'I can't run,' then you have to do it. Then it has to be somebody else. Then it's an open convention. We've had open conventions many times… They make it up as they go along anyway. It's politics," Maher said.
Maher revived his nickname for the president, "Ruth Bader Biden," arguing he's the "Ruth Bader Ginsburg of presidential politics… He stayed too long at the fair" and insisted that Biden heavily implied he intended to be a "one term" president when he ran in 2020.
Podcast giant Joe Rogan similarly blasted the "gaslighting" from Democrats, specifically calling out California Gov. Gavin Newsom over his constant praise of the president.
"We've seen some wild gaslighting," Rogan said on his podcast. "I'm like this is so crazy. You're talking about a guy who can't speak. We all know you're doing this, you're gaslighting!"
"A rational person who is a left, progressive person would say ‘We have to figure this out. This is bad.' This is bad. You can't just pretend it's good. The whole other side sees how bad it is. The world sees how bad – people in quiet sees how bad it is. Most people in hush alone having dinner are like ‘What the f--- do we do? Like Trump’s gonna win with this guy.'"
Rogan went on to insist Democrats are "gonna get rid of him" and "force him to step down," predicting Newsom will be their chosen nominee.
