Paul Begala, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, joked Friday that he “wet the bed” over the conclusions of special counsel Robert Hur’s scathing report on President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
“Look, I’m a Biden supporter. And last night I slept like a baby. I would wake up every two hours and wet the bed,” the Democratic strategist joked during an appearance on CNN.
Hur’s shocking report claims that Biden, 81, “intentionally withheld and disclosed classified materials” but should not face criminal charges, in part because a jury may consider the president an “old man with a bad memory.”
“This is terrible for Democrats. And anyone with a working brain knows that,” Begala said of the 388-page report, released Thursday.
After the report was released, Biden lashed out at reporters and the Republican special counsel in remarks at the White House, during which he declared, “I know what I’m doing” and “my memory is fine.”
Begala argued that Biden should focus on attacking Trump rather than trying to prove that his memory is correct. political
Begala, former chief strategist for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, argued that Biden should have taken a different tact.
“Instead of calling a press conference and saying, ‘I’m really smart,’ you attack the other guy,” he explained.
Key takeaways from special counsel Robert Hur’s report on classified Biden documents
- Joe Biden “intentionally withheld and disclosed classified materials” after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017.
- Classified documents about the war in Afghanistan were found in a box in the garage of Biden’s main residence in Wilmington, Delaware.
- Biden repeatedly revealed classified information he wrote in notebooks to Mark Zwonitzer, who wrote Biden’s 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad.”
- During a conversation in February 2017, Biden told Zwonitzer, “I just found all the stuff classified below” at his then-home in Virginia.
- Zwonitzer deleted recordings of his interviews with Biden after learning of Hur’s appointment as special counsel in January 2023.
- Biden showed “significant memory limitations,” both in his 2017 interviews with Zwonitzer and in his interviews with investigators on October 8-9, 2023.
- Among other lapses, Biden “did not remember when he was vice president” and “did not remember, even after several years, when his son Beau died.”
- If brought to trial, Biden “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview, as a sympathetic, well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”
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“I remember he was vice president and he said, ‘Don’t compare us to the Almighty, compare us to the alternative.’ So everything with Biden doesn’t have to be ‘I’m great,’ but ‘the other one is really harmful, dangerous, a threat.’”
“This is going to be a really tough, ugly, nasty campaign,” Begala predicted of the expected general election rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The special counsel wrote that Biden’s “memory seemed hazy” when he interviewed the president last October. MICHAEL REYNOLDS/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
“You have to tell Democrats, ‘Look, vote for the old man, support the old man, it’s important,’” he said of what the focus of Biden’s campaign should be.
Beglala also suggested that Biden should make more public comments before November, despite his propensity for mistakes.
“I want to see more of Joe Biden; the mistakes are inherent,” he argued. “But instead of just saying, ‘I’m fine,’ he simply needs to be on the attack, 24/7, for the next 269 days.”
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Source: vtt.edu.vn