- Rep. Dean Phillips, President Joe Biden’s only prominent Democratic primary challenger, said the election was “almost handed” to former President Donald Trump.
- Phillips was responding to special counsel Robert Hur’s damning report that called Biden a “well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”
- The risk-taking candidate has focused his campaign on warning fellow Democrats that Biden is too old to win a second term.
Rep. Dean Phillips, President Joe Biden’s only Democratic primary challenger, said Thursday’s Justice Department report “virtually handed” the 2024 election to former President Donald Trump.
Special counsel Robert Hur’s stunning 388-page report confirmed that Biden would not be charged for storing classified documents in his garage.
But he also said it was because a jury would likely conclude that Biden had “diminished faculties” and was a “well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”
Phillips, a Democrat from Minnesota, launched his presidential campaign in October after spending months sounding the alarm that Biden was too old to win a second term.
“The report simply affirms what most Americans already know, that the president cannot continue to serve as our Commander in Chief beyond his term which ends on January 20, 2025,” Phillips said in a statement to DailyMail. com.
Rep. Dean Phillips, President Joe Biden’s only Democratic primary challenger, said Thursday’s Justice Department report “virtually handed” the 2024 election to former President Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, Phillips responded to critics who have expressed dismay that Phillips would point to the 81-year-old president’s advanced age and question his fitness for office.
“I get attacked for being honest and saying the quiet part out loud, the part that DC insiders only do in private,” Phillips said in a post on X Tuesday.
“But it’s a shame for all of you to pretend that everything is fine,” he said. “You are leading us, and him, to a disaster, and you know it very well.”
In his post, Phillips included two recent videos of the president.
The first showed Biden campaigning Sunday in Las Vegas, where he accidentally said the name of French President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996, instead of the country’s current leader, President Emmanuel Macron.
In the second video, taken on Tuesday, Biden calls Hamas “the opposition” before recalling the terrorist group’s name when asked by reporters about a deal in the works to recover Israeli hostages from Gaza.
Even before the report’s release Thursday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre received questions about why Biden kept mixing up names and about his overall health.
President Joe Biden delivered an impromptu statement about Hur’s report Thursday night at the White House, telling reporters that “my memory has not gotten any worse” and then saying that the Egyptian president was from “Mexico.”
On Thursday night, Biden angrily addressed the content of Hur’s report, telling reporters: ‘I know what I’m doing! My memory hasn’t gotten any worse. My memory is fine. Take a look at what I’ve done since becoming president.”
‘No one thought any of the things I went through could happen. How did that happen? “I guess I just forgot what was happening,” the president added.
But before ending his question-and-answer session, Biden made another mistake: referring to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the “president of Mexico.”
Phillips said the report marks “another sad day for Americans and particularly for President Biden and his family.”
‘This Report, already facing the lowest approval numbers in modern history and losing in every key battleground state, has virtually handed the 2024 election to Donald Trump if Joe Biden is the Democratic nominee , and I invite my fellow Democrats to face the truth. ‘added the 2024 candidate.
Phillips is now the only mainstream Democrat challenging Biden for the nomination, and self-help guru Marianne Williamson dropped out of the race on Wednesday after a disappointing result in the Nevada primary.
The Minnesota congressman entered the race too late to appear on the Nevada ballot.
He received 19 percent of the vote in New Hampshire, where Biden did not appear by name on the ballot due to the Democrats’ rearrangement of the primary, but barely registered in Saturday’s Democratic primary in South Carolina.
Phillips awaits the Feb. 27 Democratic primary in Michigan and was endorsed by the Detroit News.