Biden erupts over special counsel’s report as aides look to short-circuit campaign risk

Thrust into an election year that had already been defined in part by voters’ concerns over the president’s age and fitness for office, special counsel Robert Hur’s report amounted to a legal victory but a political landmine for President Joe Biden.

The president’s outrage on Thursday night made that obvious.

Biden’s aides know there is no topic more likely to draw their boss’ fury than a slight against his family. So it was hardly a surprise to many inside the White House when an indignant Biden emerged Thursday to forcefully rebut, among other things, a claim in Hur’s report that he had forgotten the date of his son’s death.

“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden seethed in the Diplomatic Reception Room, where reporters had been hastily gathered for a presidential statement.

His visceral anger – among the brightest public flashes to date of what aides say is a mostly private hot temper – reflected a sentiment that had been boiling inside the White House for several days, since the president’s lawyers first received a copy of the report Hur prepared following his investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.

Behind the scenes, Biden’s aides fumed at a portrait they said was wholly unfair and, more importantly, nothing close to the person they say they interact with every day.

Nearly to a person, Biden’s aides use words like “sharp” and “tireless” when describing their boss, particularly when he is dealing with foreign conflicts or world leaders. They recount lengthy meetings in the middle of the night, whirlwind round-the-world foreign travel and hour-long rope-lines to illustrate a man they claim hasn’t lost a beat.

Democratic Rep. Daniel Goldman of New York, who spoke by phone with Biden a day…