A major media narrative to emerge from President Joe Biden’s fiery press conference decrying the special counsel’s report on the classified documents investigation was “gratuitous”, in reference to Robert Hur’s line citing the president’s inability to recall the date of his son Beau’s death. But, as NBC News reports, it turns out that the narrative is fake because Hur wasn’t the one to raise that issue.
If true, this means that President Biden lied to the nation when he angrily denounced Hur’s alleged question during last week’s fiery press conference which, apparently, was convened at Biden’s direction.
Watch NBC’s Peter Alexander throw gasoline on an already raging fire with regard to President Biden’s cognitive decline, as aired on NBC Nightly News on Wednesday, February 14th, 2024:
LESTER HOLT: Peter, you also have new reporting this evening about President Biden's interview with the special counsel, Robert Hur.
PETER ALEXANDER: Lester, President Biden became heated, you'll remember, responding to the special counsel's assertion that he could not remember within several years when his son Beau died. Last week the president criticized Hur for asking him about it.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn't any of their damn business.
ALEXANDER: But tonight, NBC News has learned that Hur never asked that question according to two people familiar with the interview last fall. They say it was the president, not Hur or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden’s death. The sources say the president got the date, May 30th, correct- but not the year.
This brief came as an add-on to NBC’s report on the emerging national security threat posed by Russian space nukes. Ronald Reagan is surely laughing somewhere at the irony of a President Joe Biden wishing he had the Strategic Defense Initiative right about now, but I digress.
Reasonable people with access to Biden’s speeches and appearances can reasonably expect him to talk about Beau’s passing often, sometimes at odd times- and no reasonable person would begrudge a grieving parent for doing so.
And herein lies the pickle: those same reasonable people are now asking whether Biden knowingly lied to the American people when he flamed Hur for allegedly asking the Beau question, or whether this now-disproven recollection is yet another instance of Biden’s fading cognition.
NBC alone reported on this development, as CBS and ABC were otherwise occupied. We expect that to change soon, given the ongoing debate over Biden’s age, health, and cognition.
