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Kamala Harris and Joe Biden

Photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

Support from the deputy: In the debate about the age of US President Joe Biden, his deputy Kamala Harris sharply rejected critical comments in a special investigator's report. "The way the President's conduct was characterized in this report could not be more wrong and was clearly politically motivated," Harris said Friday at the White House.

The White House also expressed clear criticism. Given that the investigation results did not justify charges, the question arises as to why "the report spends time making baseless and inappropriate criticism of the president," said spokesman Ian Sams.

Critical comments in special counsel Robert Hur's report into Biden's handling of classified documents had fueled debate about the 81-year-old president's state of mind. It said, among other things, that Biden seemed like a “well-meaning, older man with a bad memory.”

Biden himself had already reacted angrily to the special investigator's assessment on Thursday evening. "My memory is good," he said at a short-term press conference in the White House. “I'm well-meaning, I'm an older man, and I know the hell I'm doing. I’m the president and I got this country back on its feet.”

In his report, special investigator Hur concluded that Biden had not committed a criminal offense because of the retention of confidential documents from his time as vice president - actually a success for Biden. However, the assessments of Biden's memory made headlines in particular. Hur also cited the president's supposedly poor memory as an argument that a jury would never find the president guilty in a hypothetical trial.

Biden is already the oldest president in US history and repeatedly causes a stir with slips of the tongue and mix-ups:

  • Most recently, Biden confused the late former Chancellor Helmut Kohl with the former Chancellor Angela Merkel,

  • also the late French head of state François Mitterrand with incumbent Emmanuel Macron.

  • At the press conference on Thursday evening, Biden made another blunder: He referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the “Mexican president.”

The Republicans enjoy exploiting Biden's verbal missteps - even though their expected 77-year-old presidential candidate Donald Trump also repeatedly raises eyebrows with his bizarre statements.

dop/AFP