Joe Biden: Hoarder of Classified Documents, Dementia Patient, President of the United States of America

Joseph R. Biden appears to have advanced dementia.

Among the abundant evidence for his mental disabilities is now the report of special counsel Robert K. Hur, who recommended against charging Biden for mishandling classified documents, in part because Biden can’t remember anything:

Mr. Biden’s memory … appeared to have significant limitations – both at the time he spoke to [his ghostwriter Mark] Zwonitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden’s recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.

In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (“if it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?”), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (“in 2009, am I still Vice President?”). He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he had a real “difference” of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Biden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama (p. 207f.)

The report was released just a week after Biden confused German Chancellor Helmut Kohl for Angela Merkel and French President François Mitterand for Emanuel Macron; compounding his error, Biden at first said Mitterand, who died in 1996, was “from Germany.” One has the impression of a man who thinks he is still living in the 1990s. In a more recent speech, delivered to defend himself against the characterisations in Hur’s report, Biden called Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi “the president of Mexico.” He also railed against the suggestion that he couldn’t remember the date of his son’s death, asking like an angry old man, “How in the hell dare he raise that?” The remarks are ironic, given that Hur included his discussion of Biden’s cognitive defects for exculpatory purposes.

Two mutually supporting theories address this remarkable state of affairs.