Biden hits back after special counsel report on secret docs questions his memory
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00:00 Evening, the early evening, we got that report from the special counsel and we'd been hearing
00:04 that we might be hearing from Biden the entire day, but it didn't materialize.
00:08 And then eventually there was a 15 minute warning and suddenly a primetime address from
00:12 Joe Biden where he really pushed back on some of the headlines that came out of that, some
00:17 of them questioning his mental competency.
00:21 Joe Biden tried to get the narrative back on track by saying that he'd actually complied
00:26 with this investigation saying, quote, "This was an exhaustive investigation going back
00:30 more than 40 years, even into the 1970s when I was a young senator.
00:34 I cooperated completely, threw up no roadblocks and sought no delays."
00:38 A slight jab there at Donald Trump, who was also facing investigation and now criminal
00:43 charges because of his mishandling of documents.
00:47 And that was something that Joe Biden tried to bring up time and time again.
00:50 But the questions from reporters were all about his mental competency, something that
00:54 had been brought up time and time again within that special counsel report.
00:59 One of them said that Joe Biden could not remember when he was vice president, when
01:04 his term ended.
01:05 And then another part really bringing home the emotion for Joe Biden when it said he
01:10 couldn't remember what year his son Beau died.
01:13 And that was something Joe Biden really pushed back on.
01:16 He was visibly emotional when he said, how the hell dare he mention something like that?
01:22 He said that when the special counsel brought that up, he thought, how the hell dare he
01:25 say that to me?
01:27 It was quite a touching moment, but also something that he really felt viscerally.
01:31 It was very evident to see.
01:33 But the reporters, again, questioning his mental competency.
01:36 And at one point, Joe Biden even had a bit of another gaffe.
01:40 He's had a couple of them over the last few days, where he said two times just this week
01:44 alone, that he's had conversations with European leaders who have both died many years ago.
01:50 In some cases, he mistook Emmanuel Macron for François Mitterrand, the former president
01:56 of France, and Helmut Kohl as well for Olaf Scholz.
02:00 So it has been a bit of a gaffe-prone week.
02:03 And it continued when Joe Biden called President el-Sisi of Egypt, President el-Sisi of Mexico,
02:11 when he was talking about Gaza and Israel.
02:14 So it was a bit of a to and fro today.
02:18 But Joe Biden insisting, quote, "my memory is fine," and bringing up his track record
02:23 once again, insisting that he did not share classified documents.
02:26 Unlike Donald Trump, that's what he said.
02:29 And this is obviously different to what we've seen from Biden recently.
02:32 He's been kind of hidden away from the press in recent days.
02:35 And this was more Biden off script, as it were, especially in that question and answer
02:40 section, in that late night, last minute address at the White House.