Biden Faces Accusations About Mental Capacities in Bombshell New Book
As President Biden, 82, battles his own cancer and questions about his physical health, he is also facing accusations about his mental capacities in the White House. A bombshell new book titled Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, sheds light on a 2023 interview Biden had with Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating the president’s handling of classified records at the time.
Hur’s conclusion after the interview was that Biden was an “elderly man with a poor memory,” a claim that the new biography seeks to support. In one section of the book, the authors reveal that Biden displayed “significant limitations” during the interview. According to the book, Biden’s recorded conversations were described as slow and filled with struggles to remember events and read from his own notebook entries.
During the fall of 2023, Biden’s memory was put to the test again during interviews with the special counsel’s office. Hur concluded that Biden’s memory had worsened over time. Biden seemed to have difficulty grasping the timeline of his vice presidency, even asking when he stopped being vice president, showing signs of memory lapses.
Another concerning incident mentioned in the book is Biden’s failure to recall when his son Beau died. In an audio recording, Biden is heard struggling to remember the date of Beau’s passing, displaying further signs of memory issues.
After Hur’s report was released, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, and Bob Bauer, Biden’s personal counsel, refuted some aspects of the report, including attacks on the president’s memory. They argued that the report’s treatment of Biden’s memory was inaccurate and inappropriate.
The Biden administration has pushed back against the narrative that the former president was unfit for office, attributing his struggles to a speech impediment rather than cognitive decline. Officials have emphasized that Biden’s unique lifelong challenges should not be used to discredit his ability to serve as president.
