I never thought I’d say this, but President Joe Biden has actually called into question that old joke that you can tell when a politician is lying because his lips are moving.
Unfortunately for the life-long office-holder — and more unfortunately for the country he’s supposedly running — it’s not because he’s developed a streak of honesty unusual in his profession.
No, the reason Biden cannot sometimes be accused of lying is because lying implies an intent to deceive, whereas the president himself seems often unaware of what the truth actually is.
Here’s an example: Biden is apparently mad at special counsel Robert Hur for something Hur never did. That doesn’t strike me as a lie so much as some sort of emotional disability.
You’ve probably already read that, in his report about Biden’s mishandling of classified material, Hur stated that during his questioning of the president, Biden “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
Biden reacted to that statement with anger during a news conference that has been described in terms that range for “hastily called” to a “debacle.”
“How in the hell dare he raise that?” Biden asked the media — rhetorically, one presumes. “Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it wasn’t any of their damn business.”
That appears, to all intents and purposes, to be how Biden remembers the interview. The only problem being, of course, that it didn’t happen that way at all.
“Hur never asked that question, according to two people familiar with Hur’s five-hour interview with the president over two days last October,” NBC News reported Wednesday. “It was the president, not Hur or his team, who first introduced Beau Biden’s death, they said.”
Should Biden resign?
Whoops.
Biden was apparently trying to remember the timing of a conversation with a ghostwriter in 2017, the outlet reported. In “discussing what else was happening in his life” at the time, Biden accurately recalled the date of his son Beau’s death (May 30), but couldn’t recall the year.
No one had asked him the year. Beau’s name had come up, but it was the president, not the special counsel, who brought up the date of his death, according to the sources with whom NBC spoke.
In addition to embarrassing himself with the faulty recollection, Biden has drawn others into the conflict who may now be regretting their involvement.
“Why in the hell are you asking that question?” former Attorney General Eric Holder asked MSNBC. “What does that have to do with the retention of classified documents?”
He also implied that Hur was “a rube, perhaps” — a suggestion for which he likely owns the special counsel an apology, since it was largely based on Biden’s false claim.
“First lady Jill Biden questioned in a fundraising letter whether Hur was using ‘our son’s death to score political points,’ NBC reported, another suggestion for which Hur is probably owned an apology that he’s unlikely ever to see.
The good news in all of this is that the interview, which ranged over two days last October, was not only recorded but has also since been transcribed. House Republicans have demanded copies of both.
Releasing the audio may help Americans determine whether they agree with Hur’s assessment of the 81-year-old president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
That, for Biden, is probably the best case scenario. Because the conclusion they would most likely draw otherwise would be that the president is just another typical politician.
You know. A liar.
