Minutes after the special counsel report landed on Thursday afternoon, House Democrats stood and cheered for President Joe Biden as he used their annual retreat as the latest chance to make a forceful case for four more years on the job.
By the time they took their seats as the president returned to the stage minutes later, murmurs were rippling around the room, according to several who spoke afterward to CNN.
How damaging are all the renewed questions about age and mental acuity going to be? Does anyone have a plan to make more Americans see the behind-the-scenes sharpness and lucidity that they know is far from the public image? And why was the leader of the free world sitting in front of one of the friendliest audiences he could find, long after the press had been escorted out, answering scripted questions off prepared notecards – even if he did end up quickly moving past them to riffs of his own?
Whether brutally honest or – as Biden aides charge – a partisan hatchet job by a Donald Trump appointee out to damage a president he couldn’t find cause to prosecute, the special counsel’s report aimed straight at what every Biden adviser has known would be the president’s consistent liability from the moment he started talking about running for reelection: At 81, he’s clearly aged, and to many that looks like he’s not up to the job.
One Democratic member of the House responded to being told of the questions about age and memory raised in the report with a morbid laugh and sullen shake of the head. Another started anxiously asking for a sense of how others were responding, palpably feeling at wit’s end. Even members who feel like ageism, double standards for Trump and overblown concerns about Biden are all at play say they are getting worried that the questions about age – which have been showing up in many…
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