The war over Robert Hur

Hero? Villain?

Special Counsel Robert Hur is on Capitol Hill testifying in the wake of his report into Joe Biden’s handling and retention of classified documents as well as his comments about the president’s supposed memory issues. (You can watch it here!)

In his opening statement, Hur addressed his decision to describe Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” saying:

“My assessment in the report about the relevance of the president's memory was necessary and accurate and fair...I did not sanitize my explanation nor did I disparage the president unfairly.”

Hours before Hur’s testimony began, a transcript of his two days of interviews with Biden was released for the first time — providing us with some sense of how the conversation went and allowing the media to judge whether Hur’s claims about Biden’s memory were justified.

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I scanned several top media sites this morning to get a sense of how they portrayed the Biden that emerges in the transcript. It was, um, a wild ride.

Here’s Axios’ take — under the headline “Biden had repeated mental lapses during special counsel interview”:

In his five-hour interview with special counsel Robert Hur, President Biden repeatedly mixed up dates, countries and the timeline of significant events, including the years his son Beau died and Donald Trump was elected, according to a transcript of the interview reviewed by Axios…

….The transcript supports Hur's account that Biden had multiple mental lapses, despite recent pushback from the president and the White House.

Which is pretty rough for Biden, right?

Well, if you prefer a different version of What It All Means, check out the lead of the Washington Post piece on the transcript:

President Biden was in the early stages of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur when the topic of Beau Biden came up — initially with Biden raising it and later as Biden was attempting to get his chronological bearings and wondered aloud when, exactly, it was that his son died.

“What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30,” he said, naming the correct day, according to a transcript of the exchange reviewed by The Washington Post.

Two others in the room chimed in with the year, and Biden questioned, “Was it 2015 when he died?”

Not long after the exchange, Hur suggested they consider taking a brief break.

“No,” Biden responded, before launching into a long explanation of Beau’s death and its impact on him deciding not to run for president in 2016. “Let me just keep going to get it done.”

The New York Times, just by way of comparison, tried to forge a middle path on the transcript. Here’s the lead of the Times piece:

A transcript of a special counsel’s hourslong interview of President Biden over his handling of classified files shows that on several occasions the president fumbled with dates and the sequence of events, while otherwise appearing clearheaded.

Partisans are — already — having a field day, cherry-picking the analysis of the transcript that best fits their political purposes and running with it.

The Biden-Harris rapid response operation, for example, posted this on Twitter X:

And the Trump war room account on X posted this tweet from Axios’ Alex Thompson, who wrote the piece I referenced above:

So, what do we DO about all of this? How are we supposed to think about Hur, his report and the broader question of Biden’s memory and age?

Broadly speaking, I think Hur (and his report) have reached the point in the political conversation where what you think of him (and it) is entirely driven by your partisan viewpoint.

If you are a Biden supporter, you will note that Hur was appointed as a U.S. Attorney by Trump. And that the evidence he provides is, at best, mixed on whether Biden has recall issues. And, therefore, for Hur to state that one of the factors for not charging Biden was the fact that he would come across to a jury as well meaning but enfeebled by age was a MAJOR stretch.

If you are a Trump supporter, you will see the transcript as proof positive that Biden simply couldn’t remember (or couldn’t remember exactly) a series of critical dates — including when he was vice president and when Trump got elected. And you will wonder why, if Hur found that Biden had willfully retained classified documents after leaving office, the president wasn’t charged with a crime.

There’s plenty in the transcript — it was a five-hour interview over two days! — to justify either of those views. What Hur means then is largely dependent on what you already believed about Biden going into this special counsel report. He (and his report) are a litmus test for partisanship — like so many other issues in our world these days.

The only real question then is what do the small number of people who haven’t already made their minds up about this election think about the Hur report. Which, well, is hard to say. Because these voters tend to be very low information voters — meaning they don’t follow this stuff as closely (or anywhere near as closely!) as we do.

My educated guess on what they know of Hur and his report? It showed that Biden has a bad memory. And is old. And that’s about it.

Of course, as I wrote last night, Biden and his campaign team are taking smart steps to address the age issue now. But we won’t know for some time if that strategy works.

Until then, Hur and his report will be a political football — kicked around by both sides as they try to score points in advance of November.