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When President Biden appeared at a last-minute information convention on Thursday evening, he hoped to guarantee the nation of his psychological acuity hours after a particular counsel’s report had devastatingly referred to him as a “well-meaning, aged man with a poor reminiscence.”
Instead, a visibly offended Mr. Biden made the precise sort of verbal flub that has stored Democrats so nervous for months, mistakenly referring to the president of Egypt, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, because the “president of Mexico” as he tried to deal with the most recent developments within the warfare in Gaza.
The particular counsel’s report and the president’s night efficiency positioned Mr. Biden’s superior age, the singularly uncomfortable topic looming over his re-election bid, again on the heart of America’s political dialog.
The 81-year-old president — already the oldest within the nation’s historical past — has for years fought the notion that he’s a diminished determine. “My reminiscence is ok,” he insisted on Thursday from the White House.
Yet in a single chopping phrase, the report from Robert Okay. Hur, the particular counsel who had investigated Mr. Biden’s dealing with of labeled paperwork, captured the fears of Democrats who maintain their breath when Mr. Biden seems in public and the hopes of Republicans, particularly former President Donald J. Trump and his allies. The Trump operation has made plain its intent to make use of Mr. Biden’s stiffer gait and generally garbled speech to forged him as weak.
The Biden marketing campaign has constructed its technique round telling voters that the November election is a selection between the president, no matter doubts the general public has about his age, and an opponent in Mr. Trump, 77, whom they paint as a menace to democracy and private freedoms.
Democrats way back forged their lot with Mr. Biden. With no severe different within the major race, many within the party consider the nation’s future is using on the president’s capacity to influence voters that he’s nonetheless up for the job for one more 4 years.
But for all of Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities — the Republican Party has been on a protracted dropping streak since he rose to energy — the upward of $2 billion that the Biden marketing campaign and its allies hope to lift and spend won’t make the present president any youthful.
And Thursday evening’s information convention was an instance of the political risks for Mr. Biden, whose missteps are magnified partly by the White House crew’s tight management over his media publicity. His aides are so threat averse that they handed even on a pre-Super Bowl interview this weekend earlier than one of many nation’s largest annual tv audiences.
“Fair or not, you may’t unring the bell,” mentioned David Axelrod, the previous strategist for Barack Obama who has emerged as one of many Democratic Party’s main figures warning about how voters view Mr. Biden’s age. Mr. Axelrod mentioned the particular counsel’s report was so troubling for Democrats as a result of it “goes to the core of what’s plaguing Biden politically now, which is a widespread worry that he’s less than it.”
He added: “The most damaging issues in politics are the issues that affirm folks’s pre-existing suspicions, and people are the issues that journey very quick. It’s an issue.”
The Biden marketing campaign declined to remark.
As a authorized matter, Mr. Hur’s report absolved Mr. Biden of felony wrongdoing, saying that there was inadequate proof to cost him. But Democrats seized on his loaded language — Mr. Hur additionally invoked Mr. Biden’s “diminished schools in advancing age” as one thing that will have been sympathetic to a jury — to accuse the particular counsel, who was as soon as a Trump appointee, of partisan motives.
For Republicans aiming to oust Mr. Biden, the report and the president’s offended response got here as a present after a number of days through which their very own dysfunction in Congress dominated the information. The Republican National Committee shortly created a graphic with the report’s eight most brutal phrases — “well-meaning, aged man with a poor reminiscence” — grafted onto the Biden marketing campaign brand.
Never thoughts that the particular counsel declined to cost Mr. Biden whereas Mr. Trump’s personal, extra severe case over whether or not he mishandled labeled paperwork stays a part of the 91 felony fees he faces throughout 4 jurisdictions.
Still, Chris LaCivita, a prime strategist for Mr. Trump, referred to as the particular counsel’s description of Mr. Biden “damning and defining.”
“The report confirms what Americans have been witnessing throughout their TV screens for the previous few years — that an aged man with a poor reminiscence is main America right into a morass of wars, inflationary catastrophe and lack of alternative for taxpaying Americans,” Mr. LaCivita mentioned.
Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat who’s near Mr. Biden, predicted that he would obtain extra calls from “folks expressing concern.” But he mentioned he would reply by recounting his direct experiences with Mr. Biden, which he mentioned demonstrated that the president was “sharp, engaged and purposeful.”
Still, Mr. Biden’s mix-up of Egypt and Mexico got here quickly after a few slips within the final week relating to deceased European leaders. First, throughout a marketing campaign swing in Nevada, he confused François Mitterrand, a former French president who died in 1996, with the nation’s present president, Emmanuel Macron. Then, on Wednesday, he referred twice to having met in 2021 with Helmut Kohl, a former German chancellor who died in 2017, as a substitute of with Angela Merkel, who led the nation three years in the past.
Mr. Coons made mild of “the calls I get from freaked-out Democrats saying, ‘Oh my God, the president mentioned X!’ I feel, ‘And the previous president mentioned Y!’ If you requested Donald Trump who François Mitterrand was, he would have a look at you want, ‘What are you speaking about?’”
Mr. Trump has made his personal collection of verbal stumbles — he lately confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi and beforehand combined up the leaders of Hungary and Turkey — however polls present that voters don’t query his sharpness the identical means they do Mr. Biden’s. An NBC News ballot launched this week discovered that voters gave Mr. Trump a bonus of 16 share factors on the query of who was extra competent and efficient — a 25-point swing since 2020, when Mr. Biden held a nine-point edge on that query.
Ms. Haley has argued {that a} new technology would higher serve the nation and each events. “The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate goes to win this election!” she wrote in a fund-raising electronic mail on Thursday.
Mr. Biden’s aides harassed privately that strategies that his reminiscence is lapsing wouldn’t harm him as a result of voters have already priced in his age when contemplating whether or not to help him towards Mr. Trump. Some of the president’s allies on Thursday dusted off a playbook utilized by previous presidents going through inquiries: Attack the investigators as motivated by partisan politics.
Representative Robert Garcia, a California Democrat, mentioned Mr. Hur had no experience to judge Mr. Biden’s reminiscence.
“The people penning this report, they’re attorneys, they’re not docs,” Mr. Garcia mentioned. “This particular person’s a Republican who couldn’t discover any proof. He’s in all probability making an attempt to harm the president politically.”
For many Democrats, the episode was an unwelcome echo of the method to the 2016 election. James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director on the time, held a information convention that summer time to declare that he wouldn’t cost Hillary Clinton over her use of a non-public electronic mail server, however he nonetheless excoriated her judgment — after which, months later, reopened his investigation within the days earlier than the election.
“This, for many people, brings again the 11 days previous to Clinton-Trump,” mentioned Bakari Sellers, a Democratic strategist, who predicted that Mr. Biden’s troubles would blow over as a result of the election stays far-off. “The blessing for Biden is that he was outdated earlier than this report, he’ll be outdated after this report. We all knew he’s outdated.”
The particular counsel’s report was surprisingly blunt. It described Mr. Biden’s reminiscence as showing to have “vital limitations,” characterised an interview he recorded in 2017 as “painfully gradual” and mentioned Mr. Biden didn’t bear in mind some key dates of his vice presidency or “when his son Beau died.”
In a letter to the particular counsel, Mr. Biden’s attorneys referred to as the quite a few references to Mr. Biden’s reminiscence “gratuitous,” in addition to “prejudicial and inflammatory.” And Mr. Biden himself, with seen frustration, expressed disbelief on the concept he didn’t know when his son had died: “How within the hell dare he elevate that?”
Representative Daniel S. Goldman, a New York Democrat and a former federal prosecutor, mentioned the eye that Mr. Biden’s Mexico-Egypt slip immediately attracted was a “good instance of the place the age points get fully exaggerated and blown out of proportion.”
Mr. Biden stays nearly sure to be the Democratic nominee. He has received his party’s first nominating contests with ease, and deadlines to qualify for the Democratic major poll have handed in about 80 % of states and territories.
Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who’s Mr. Biden’s solely remaining Democratic major challenger, has attracted little help up to now. Mr. Phillips mentioned the particular counsel’s description of Mr. Biden’s reminiscence confirmed that “the president just isn’t able to proceed to function our commander in chief past January 2025.”
James Carville, the veteran Democratic strategist, mentioned that the destructive perceptions of Mr. Biden’s age couldn’t be dismissed as a distraction.
“The public doesn’t view his age as — that’s not a Fox News situation,” he mentioned in an interview after the information convention. “It’s not a Taylor Swift rigging the Super Bowl sort of factor. So — I don’t know the way you get out of this.”
“The complete day,” he added, “was confirming an current suspicion.”
Maggie Haberman contributed reporting.
