CNN’s Paul Begala is a Democratic Party loyalist to the hilt. Still, even he can’t spin the contents of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report about Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified information. The Hur report is damning on multiple fronts. It says Biden willfully retained classified materials, shared such information with others—his ghostwriter—and said his mental capacity was immensely degraded when he was interviewed.
The latter is the reason why no charges were filed: he’s too braindead to be brought before a jury. That is why Begala said he slept like a baby, sleeping two hours and wetting the bed because this report was disastrous for Democrats. Any person who has all their marbles can tell Biden isn’t all there:
CNN contributor says he “wet the bed” last night after the special counsel’s report describing Biden’s mental incapacity. pic.twitter.com/iYBCRGcFdc
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 9, 2024
Paul Begala on CNN: "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."
— Tim Hanrahan (@TimJHanrahan) February 9, 2024
So, was the White House press conference last night a blunder? Yes and no. Begala added that Joe Biden’s visibility needs to increase, but he can’t take the ‘I’m in charge’ strategy at the podium. He said the president needs to fix bayonets and attack 24/7 instead. The problem is that Trump can do that better and with more vigor.
Escaping an indictment wasn’t a real threat here, but the report's contents kept Biden aides up at night for good reason. Like a zombie, it resurrected questions about Biden’s fitness for office, which has come into question throughout his presidency. Most recently, it was over the president’s serial errors in saying he spoke to world leaders who have been dead on the campaign stump.
Biden can’t de-age. And with this now tossed into the 2024 ether, he can’t hide from it either. The problem for Democrats is that when Joe tries to dispel these voter concerns about his memory, he makes things worse. Last night, the Biden White House was in a lose-lose situation. You don’t get brownie points for trotting out there because this is expected of you as president.
The basement strategy appears dead, and Biden's aides might have to come to terms with putting Biden out there more with the high probability that he will trip over his tongue. Biden did multiple times last night, forgetting the name of the church where he got a rosary to remember Beau and mixing up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico when discussing the Israel-Hamas war.
You know Jill probably isn’t in favor of this strategy.
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Side Note: Of course, some aggressive attacks got directed at Special Counsel Robert Hur for being a hack investigator for including the sections about Biden's age and mental acuity. CNN's Jeffrey Toobin was especially harsh with his comments, saying it was inappropriate to include those sections, which is ballsy for a guy who got placed on a forced sabbatical of sorts for masturbating in front of staffers on a Zoom call in 2020. That incident cost Toobin his job at The New Yorker but not CNN.