Biden rebuts counsel report, says 'memory is fine'

STORY: In a surprise speech Thursday, U.S. President Joe Biden hit back at a special counsel report that described him as a ‘well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

“I’m well-meaning and I’m an elderly man and I know what the hell I‘m doing. I've been President and I put this country back on its feet.”

In the report, released earlier on Thursday, Special Counsel Robert Hur said Biden will not face criminal charges for his mishandling of classified documents.

Hur's conclusion ensures that Biden, unlike his expected presidential rival Donald Trump, will not risk prison time for mishandling sensitive government documents.

However, Hur wrote that Biden's memory was "severely limited" when he was interviewed by members of his prosecution team.

After the report's release, Biden lawyers accused Hur of overreach, and said the president's memory lapses were not unusual for someone trying to describe events that took place years ago.

They also called some of the comments in the report ‘inaccurate and inappropriate.’

In his speech, Biden lashed out against Hur’s suggestion that he had forgotten when his son, Beau, had died.

“I know there’s some attention paid to some language in a report about my recollection of events. There’s even reference that I don’t remember when my son died. How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly when I was asked the question I thought to myself: ‘What’s it any of their damn business?’”

At another point, when speaking on aid to Gaza, Biden appeared to confuse the leaders of Mexico and Egypt.

“As you know, initially the president of Mexico, Sisi, did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him, I convinced him to open the gate.”

Earlier in the week, Biden mistook a conversation he had with Angela Merkel in 2021 as having been with the late German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017.

The recent blunders, on top of the counsel report, could cause further embarrassment for the 81-year-old, as the oldest president in US history tries to convince voters that he should serve another four-year term.