Biden’s gaffes are a gift to Trump – but it’s still not too late to get rid of him

After a week of unenforced errors – and a damning report declaring the president ‘an elderly man with a poor memory’ – the Democrats are quietly hoping a replacement candidate emerges to run in his place, writes Jon Sopel

Joe Biden called a press conference to demonstrate his mental acuity – then referred to ‘President al Sisi of Mexico’ (AP)

“I’ve got good news and bad news, Mr President.”

“Shoot. Give me the good news.”

“We’ve got the Special Counsel’s report into you having those confidential documents, and he’s not recommending prosecution.”

“Quite right, too. And the bad?”

“Umm. Well, Mr President. It’s because he thinks you’re too gaga to stand trial…”

I parody, I am sure, how the news of the Special Counsel’s report was delivered to President Biden. But I barely exaggerated the conclusion of the report by the Justice Department’s investigator, which was released on Thursday.

While the investigation revealed that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” after he stopped being vice president, the reasons for not taking further action are almost worse than if he had been prosecuted.

The executive summary from Robert Hur talks about how “Mr Biden’s memory was significantly limited”:

“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, and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began. He did not remember even within several years when his son Beau died.”

The president is “an elderly man with a poor memory”, it added.

It is devastating in the picture it paints. So the 81-year-old president called an impromptu press conference at the White House to show that his mental acuity was sharp and grasp on events undiminished. He was seething, particularly that he couldn’t remember when his son died.

The news conference went reasonably well. His press team exhaled. And just when it seemed he was done and the Q&A session was over, he returned to the microphone to answer questions on the situation in Gaza.

Very quickly, toes began to curl deep inside White House staffers’ loafers. Biden talked about “President al Sisi of Mexico”. Umm. Egypt. If you call a news conference to show that your grip is iron-like, don’t draw attention to the very thing you are trying to dismiss as piffle.

And all this after a shocking week for Biden. He has talked about his recent meeting at the G7 in Cornwall with “President Mitterrand of Germany”. Where to start? Mitterand has been dead since 1996, and even when alive, he was very much French. Apparently, the German chancellor Helmut Kohl was also at this G7. Unfortunately, he was also dead and had stopped running Germany in 1998.

Add to that some excruciating comments at a separate event about Gaza, when he couldn’t remember the name of the terrorist group that had carried out the 7 October attacks, and it’s hard to reach any conclusion other than Biden is not at the peak of his game.

There are some Democrats who try to blame us in the media for drawing attention to these occasional lapses; that we don’t put Trump’s more bizarre utterances under the same microscope. That is nonsense. One, the lapses are more than just occasional – they are becoming increasingly frequent; and two, Trump getting confused between his rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, and the former Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, was covered extensively.

The really shocking bit is this still appears to be the most likely – and unappetising – choice that the American people will have come November.

The hope that Bidenland has been clinging to is that he is soon going to find political reward in the way the US economy is performing, and improving; that, although there has been no political dividend yet in his approval rating, it will come.

And it is true if you look at jobless numbers, the fall in inflation, strong economic growth, real-term pay increases, the markets humming, then America appears beautifully set. But voters keep coming back to the age thing – that he is already an old and wobbly 81, and would be 86 at the end of a second term. It is a gift for Trump.

It is my belief that if there was an easy alternative – say, a Michelle Obama (the fantasy and fever dream of many a Democrat) saying “OK Joe, I’ll stand if you don’t want to” – the Dems would press the button saying “bank” in a heartbeat.

But there are no easy alternatives. Kamala Harris is unpopular, and there is no young tyro waiting in the wings. There are only least worst options. If nothing changes in the next couple of months and there is no revival in Biden’s fortunes, then I think senior Democrat strategists will be forced to look at those options and consider which is the least worst of the least worst.

All this while, Donald Trump is still beset by his own legal woes. His attempt to argue that he has absolute immunity from prosecution for anything and everything that happened while he was president, has been shot down in flames by three federal appeal court judges. So Trump facing trial later this spring is still a distinct possibility.

And for all that Trump’s people are all over the latest Biden pratfalls, Trump’s support is absolutely solid, but not growing. There is still an anti-Trump majority in America.

Biden has a good line on all this. He says: “Don’t compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative.” And that argument has some resonance. But the real danger this November for his chances of re-election is not Trump as the alternative, but the sofa. Who is going to go out and vote enthusiastically for someone who appears to be in clear decline?

Staying at home on the couch might be the biggest winner in 2024. And that is lousy for democracy.

Jon Sopel is the former BBC North America editor and now presents Global’s ‘The News Agents’ podcast