It was a political grenade in the form of a 345-page report.
The pyrotechnics were delivered on Thursday afternoon in the findings of special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation into Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents after he left the vice-presidency in 2017.
The top-line conclusion was that the president would not face criminal charges for his actions, despite evidence that he had “wilfully retained and disclosed classified materials… when he was a private citizen”.
The bottom line was much more damaging. Among the reasons Mr Hur listed for why he had decided not to prosecute the 81-year-old president was because he would likely be a sympathetic figure to a jury who would view him as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory”.
Issues about Joe Biden’s age and competency to serve another four years in office have been simmering for practically as long as Mr Biden has been in the White House, so this latest finding will provide fuel for Republican attacks and stoking concerns among some Democrats that the president is not up to the task.
It is a narrative that the Biden campaign has been desperately trying to confront, said Chris Borick, the director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.
“The polling, over and over, we see data points that suggest it is his largest liability into this election that voters think he’s simply too old to run,” he says.
It’s no surprise, then, that the Hur report prompted the White House to launch a furious counter-offensive that included the president holding an impromptu press conference, where he asserted that his memory was “just fine”.
“I know what the hell I’m doing,” he said.
Watch: Biden responds to special counsel – “I’m elderly and know what the hell I’m doing”
What’s more, the special counsel presented specific evidence to back up this assertion. He wrote that during two days of interviews, Mr Biden had frequently been unable to recall details relevant to the investigation. More than that, Mr Hur recounted, he had struggled to recall which years he had been vice-president and when his oldest son, Beau Biden, had died of cancer.
It was this last claim that prompted an angry response from the president during his press conference at the White House on Thursday evening.
“How in the hell he dare raise that?” the president said.
The press conference itself could lend more fuel to the attacks on Mr Biden, however, as the president answered a question about the Gaza War by referring to Egyptian President Mohamed al-Sisi as the president of Mexico.
That stumble, not unlike other verbal miscues by Mr Biden in recent days, exposes the scope of the challenge facing his re-election effort. The best way for the president to address concerns about his age is to run a vigorous campaign and increase his public exposure. But every attempt comes with the risk of actions or evidence that feed existing concerns.
The White House has made other efforts to defuse the potency of the Hur report. Mr Biden’s personal lawyer, Richard Sauber, tried to convince the special counsel to drop references to Mr Biden’s mental acuity and mental lapses, writing in a letter that such language was not “accurate or appropriate”.
Mr Biden also noted that he had given his two days of testimony to the special counsel shortly after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel – while he was “in the middle of handling an international crisis”, he said.
Other Biden allies have pushed back on Mr Hur’s impartiality, pointing out that he was appointed to a US attorney office by Donald Trump in 2017. It was Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland who selected Mr Hur as special counsel, however.
The Biden team has also been quick to pounce on the verbal missteps of his likely November opponent, 77-year-old Donald Trump. The former president recently confused his primary opponent Nikki Haley with former Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and referred to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban as the leader of Turkey.
The best case for the White House may be that this particular grenade exploded in February, a full nine months from election day.
Larry Sabato, the director for the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, says concerns about Mr Biden’s age are already essentially baked into the race, making the report damaging but not fatal.
The public “will look at it, and will raise one eyebrow, not both”, he says. “Because in a way, people already knew this. Even if you casually watch five minutes of a speech he’s giving, you already know this,” he says.
When American voters finally head to the polls, the assertions contained in a special counsel report that ultimately declined to find Mr Biden criminally culpable will be of less concern than issues like the economy and abortion.
The worst-case scenario, on the other hand, is that this is just the start of a cavalcade of evidence undermining the president on one of his weakest attributes. And the arrow of time only points one way.
OTTAWA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the NDP is caving to political pressure from Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre when it comes to their stance on the consumer carbon price.
Trudeau says he believes Jagmeet Singh and the NDP care about the environment, but it’s “increasingly obvious” that they have “no idea” what to do about climate change.
On Thursday, Singh said the NDP is working on a plan that wouldn’t put the burden of fighting climate change on the backs of workers, but wouldn’t say if that plan would include a consumer carbon price.
Singh’s noncommittal position comes as the NDP tries to frame itself as a credible alternative to the Conservatives in the next federal election.
Poilievre responded to that by releasing a video, pointing out that the NDP has voted time and again in favour of the Liberals’ carbon price.
British Columbia Premier David Eby also changed his tune on Thursday, promising that a re-elected NDP government would scrap the long-standing carbon tax and shift the burden to “big polluters,” if the federal government dropped its requirements.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
Simon Jolin-Barrette, minister responsible for consumer protection, has tabled a bill to force merchants to calculate tips based on the price before tax.
That means on a restaurant bill of $100, suggested tips would be calculated based on $100, not on $114.98 after provincial and federal sales taxes are added.
The bill would also increase the rebate offered to consumers when the price of an item at the cash register is higher than the shelf price, to $15 from $10.
And it would force grocery stores offering a discounted price for several items to clearly list the unit price as well.
Businesses would also have to indicate whether taxes will be added to the price of food products.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
Quebec legislature member Youri Chassin has announced he’s leaving the Coalition Avenir Québec government to sit as an Independent.
He announced the decision shortly after writing an open letter criticizing Premier François Legault’s government for abandoning its principles of smaller government.
In the letter published in Le Journal de Montréal and Le Journal de Québec, Chassin accused the party of falling back on what he called the old formula of throwing money at problems instead of looking to do things differently.
Chassin says public services are more fragile than ever, despite rising spending that pushed the province to a record $11-billion deficit projected in the last budget.
He is the second CAQ member to leave the party in a little more than one week, after economy and energy minister Pierre Fitzgibbon announced Sept. 4 he would leave because he lost motivation to do his job.
Chassin says he has no intention of joining another party and will instead sit as an Independent until the end of his term.
He has represented the Saint-Jérôme riding since the CAQ rose to power in 2018, but has not served in cabinet.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
