Biden-Harris feeling the GOP’s political tool bag – racism, sexism and now ageism
In the Philippines, the current president and the former president spar over drug use, human rights abuses and methods to subvert the Constitution to their will.
In America, the model democracy is currently obsessed with President Joe Biden’s age and memory.
Don’t be fooled.
Worry instead about the ageism toward Biden thanks to a certain Asian American special prosecutor named Robert Hur.
Hur went above and below the call of duty in a political slander of President Joe Biden.
Hur’s investigation concluded there would be no prosecution against Biden for any mishandling of classified documents. So why wasn’t that the big headline last week?
U.S. Attorney Robert Hur arrives at U.S. District Court in Baltimore. (AP Photo/Steve Ruark, File)
Once it was determined there was not enough evidence to prosecute the president, Hur’s work was done.
Instead, Hur took a year to finish a nearly 400 page report that many mainstream news outlets misreported. For example, CNBC’s headline quoted Hur: “Biden ‘willfully’ kept classified materials, had ‘poor memory’: Special counsel.”
Unfortunately, it’s misleading. By how much? On the Just Security website, two prominent law professors found Hur’s report actually described Biden’s statements as “innocent explanations.”
“Unrefuted innocent explanations,” say Prof. Andew Weissmann and Prof. Ryan Goodman, doesn’t just mean the “case does not meet the standard for criminal prosecution – it means innocence.”
But no one walks away from the mainstream headlines about the report thinking Biden is innocent. Only that he “willfully” retained something classified, and has a “poor memory.”
None of it adds up to a prosecution. Just a public persecution.
This is the game being played by Hur, a Trump appointee to the Justice Department, who was named special prosecutor in January of last year by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a smart man who should be on the Supreme Court. He must have thought it was a stroke of genius to appoint a Trump Republican in a political year to investigate his Democratic boss. That would be a sign of unity in the fight for truth and justice, right?
It wasn’t.
Hur, the son of South Korean immigrants and a Harvard grad, knew exactly what he was doing. Last year when he was appointed by Garland, Hur said all the right things in a public statement; that he’d be “fair, impartial and dispassionate,” and would “follow the facts swiftly and thoroughly, without fear or favor.”
Right.
Or is that right-wing?
This image, contained in the report from special counsel Robert Hur, shows shows a binder containing copies of notecards and schedules for President Joe Biden during his time as vice president. (Justice Department via AP)
Even Hur’s speculative comments about Biden’s memory were challenged last Sunday by Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer who witnessed Hur’s deposing of Biden.
On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Bauer called Hur’s report a “shabby piece of work,” that reached the right legal conclusion, but then was loaded with hundreds of pages of “misstatements of facts and totally inappropriate and pejorative comments that are unfounded and not supported by the record.”
Hur appears to have padded the report to buttress his own career among Republicans. He makes memory a relevant issue when he uses it as an excuse to not prosecute Biden.
Wrote Hur: “At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
Hur’s report was not impartial, but more like an audition to be a Fox News commentator.
With no basis for a legal prosecution, Hur made sure to go for the political kill.
But he let loose the virus that is ageism.
I once thought ageism would unite us all. We may not all be the same race, ethnicity or gender, but we all fight the aging process. That should be our common ground, the thing that brings us together.
To win that fight against Father Time, we need to think of it as a team sport.
But ageism can also inspire division, creating generation gaps, all charged with emotions that fuel a discrimination harder to fight than racism.
Look at how meritocracy nerds refuse to give credit to Biden for his accomplishments, like the soft-landing on the economy.
A carnival float depicting US presidential canditate Donald Trump holding a US flag, cut in the shape of a Nazi Swastika, is driven across the old town during the traditional carnival parade in Duesseldorf, Germany, on Monday, Feb. 12, 2024.(AP Photo/Martin Meissner)
Why? They can’t deem him competent when all they see is an old man, as did Special Prosecutor Hur.
Of course, it cuts both ways. Last weekend, Donald Trump, 77, said Russia should be able to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who don’t meet their defense spending targets.
The man who wants to be president again is backing our enemy Putin against our allies. Is that Trump showing off his anti-democracy bent and his senility?
That’s why ageism has become a dominant theme for both parties and is likely to hang around.
It won’t age well, as polls show America is concerned. It shouldn’t be if we know the truth in Hur’s misleading report.
The controversy has thrust Vice President Kamala Harris into the limelight, as she defended Biden and called Hur’s report “clearly politically motivated (and) gratuitous.”
Harris also told the Wall Street Journal, “she is ready to serve” should anything happen to Biden.
Republicans and others have been sniping at Harris from day one with healthy doses of racism and sexism. Now you can add ageism to the Republican tool set, a nasty political trifecta, as the GOP continues to put the hurt on Biden and the Democrats with the Hur report.
Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator. He writes a column for INQUIRER.net’s US Channel. See his micro-talk show on YouTube.com/@emilamok1
