Topline
Mitch Landrieu, the co-chair of President Biden’s 2024 campaign, said the president would not “quit” the 2024 race, even after the special counsel report said he had “poor memory,” and recent NBC polling showed an overwhelming 76% of Americans had major or moderate concerns about his health.
The Biden campaign co-chair made the comments on Meet the Press on Sunday morning.
Key Facts
“The one thing Joe Biden is never going to do… he is never, ever going to quit, because that’s not what he’s done his entire life,” Landrieu told Meet the Press on Sunday.
Landrieu called the report’s comments about Biden’s age and memory an “ad hominem attack,” which he could personally speak to after working closely with him as a senior advisor since 2021.
“I’m telling you this guy’s tough, he’s smart, he’s on his game,” Landrieu said, adding, “this kind of sense that he’s not ready for this job is just a bucket of B.S. so deep your boots would get stuck in it.”
The Biden campaign leader claimed Biden was resilient, adding “he already lost another child earlier in his life, and he got up and went to work, and he had difficulty with his other son and he got up and went to work.”
Landrieu also went on the attack against former President Trump, noting “just the other day” he confused the day of the week, and months ago confused the leaders of China and North Korea, as well as the leaders of Hungary and Turkey.
Key Background
Although questions about Biden’s age have surrounded the 81-year-old president’s reelection campaign for months, they were forced into the spotlight on Thursday after Special Counsel Robert Hur released a report on the president’s mishandling of classified documents at his home in Delaware. Although the report did not find criminal charges were warranted against the president, it did make broad claims about the president’s health, at one point suggesting Biden appears to be a “well-meaning, elderly man with poor memory.” Both Biden and his campaign have sharply criticized the special counsel’s report, with the president himself criticizing the counsel’s assertion that he couldn’t remember when his son, Beau Biden, died of cancer in 2015. “How in the hell dare he raise that?” the president asked at a press conference after the report’s release. But then the president quickly made another gaffe, incorrectly calling Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi the “president of Mexico.”
Surprising Fact
It was the third time Biden mixed up world leaders in one week, after previously confusing former German chancellors Angela Merkel and Helmut Kohl, who held the position in the 1990s and died in 2017, and French President Emmanuel Macron with former President Francois Mitterand, who died in 1996.
Further Reading
MORE FROM FORBES‘Elderly Man With A Poor Memory’: Special Counsel Explains Why Biden Won’t Face Charges Over Classified DocsBy Ana FaguyMORE FROM FORBESRobert Hur-DOJ Special Counsel Who Criticized Biden’s Memory-Is Ex-Trump Prosecutor And NFL LawyerBy Cailey Gleeson
