Maine’s liberal Members of Congress are either keeping quiet, pointing at former President Donald Trump, or defending President Joe Biden after the Commander-in-Chief delivered a confusing and widely-panned press conference Thursday evening.
The presser came in response to a Department of Justice report that said the Special Counsel investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents would not seek charges — but only because Biden’s memory was too poor for him to stand trial.
Special Counsel Robert Hur, who was leading a probe into President Joe Biden’s handling of classified materials, released a 388-page report Thursday finding that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed” classified documents after his vice presidency, but that no criminal charges are warranted.
In explaining his decision not to recommend charges against the sitting president, Hur said that Biden presented himself in his interview as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
[RELATED: Biden Lashes Out at Press, Suffers Memory Lapse While Denying Senility…]
The Special Counsel report details instances of Biden having serious lapses in memory, including “struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries,” and not being able to remember when he was vice president and when his son Beau died.
Hur speculated that it would be difficult to convince a jury to convict Biden due to the felony statute requiring a “mental state of willfulness.”
Following the release of Hur’s report, President Biden gave a press conference Thursday evening to respond to the allegations in the report regarding his memory.
Biden explained away the Special Counsel’s account of his apparent mental incapacity by pointing to the date of his interview with Hur being in the days following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas.
The president angrily condemned Hur’s report for noting that he struggled to remember when his son died.
“How in the hell dare he raise that,” Biden said. “Frankly, when I was asked the question I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business … I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”
[RELATED: White House Spins After Confused Biden Claims He Recently Spoke to Long-Dead French President…]
The 81-year-old president did not inspire confidence in his memory later in the Thursday press conference, however, when he referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the president of Mexico.
Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins told the Maine Wire Friday that the Special Counsel report “raises important questions.”
“I encourage people to look at it themselves and draw their own conclusions,” Collins said. “It’s up to the Democrats to decide whom they want their nominee to be. And, ultimately, all of this will be in the hands of the voters.”
Maine Sen. Angus King (I) has remained silent on the Special Counsel report and Biden’s press conference.
Neither he nor Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (D-01) responded to requests for comment from the Maine Wire.
State Rep. Austin Theriault (R-Fort Kent), one of two 2024 Republican challengers to Democratic Congressman Jared Golden in Maine’s 2nd District, quickly responded to Biden’s press conference by demanding to know if Golden still supported Biden for president.
Theriault also released a statement Thursday evening insisting that Golden join him in calling for President Biden’s resignation.
“This is a very somber, serious moment for our country. We can’t have a president that’s so mentally limited that they can’t even stand trial,” Theriault said.
“In this case, it’s not a question of age — there are plenty of sharp people who are older than Biden — it’s a question of capability,” he continued. “This is a dangerous world, and a person who can start a nuclear war should not be in the mental state described by the Biden Department of Justice.”
“This is a time for bipartisan action: Jared Golden should join me in calling for Biden’s resignation,” Theriault concluded.
The Maine GOP capitalized on Biden’s bad press in a Friday fundraising email, writing that “Joe Biden’s mental incompetency was made clear to the world TWICE yesterday.”
“First, a Special Counsel working for the Biden Department of Justice found that Joe Biden is so mentally incompetent that he couldn’t even stand trial,” the email stated. “Then Biden gave an stumbling, bumbling, feeble address to the nation that proved the Special Counsel right without a doubt.”
The Special Counsel report and Biden’s surprise presser also drew attacks from national Republicans.
National Republican Congressional Caucus (NRCC) spokesperson Savannah Viar released a statement Friday morning declaring that “Mainers deserve immediate answers from Golden on Biden’s mental state.”
“Nothing could be more dangerous than a president going senile, yet that is exactly who House Democrats including Jared Golden are backing,” Viar said.
Golden did not respond to a request for comment from the Maine Wire, though he provided a comment to the Bangor newspaper that was characterized as drawing an equivalency between former President Trump and Biden.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) posted to X Thursday that Biden’s press conference “confirmed on live television what the Special Counsel report outlined.”
“He is not fit to be president,” Johnson wrote.
At the conclusion of a gun violence prevention event at the White House Friday, Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Hur’s report as “politically motivated” and “gratuitous.”
Harris took a similar tact to President Biden by explaining the president’s reported mental incapacity during the two-day interview with Hur by noting it occurred directly after Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“It was an intense moment for the commander in chief of the United States of America,” Harris said.
The vice president added that “the way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly politically motivated, gratuitous.”
New York Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler released a statement Thursday afternoon in defense of Biden, saying “MAGA Republicans will no doubt now call to investigate the investigators–it’s their favorite move–but the Hur report effectively ends the discussion.”
“President Biden cooperated fully with the Special Counsel and redacted no portion of the Special Counsel’s report,” Nadler said. “Unlike Trump, President Biden has nothing to hide.”
Nadler contrasted the Department of Justice’s probe into Trump’s handling of classified documents with that of Biden’s, saying “If Trump had cooperated with the [DOJ]– instead of lying to investigators, again and again–he might have avoided at least some of the 91 criminal charges currently pending against him.”
Ask Trump about his marriage to E. Jean Carrol, or maybe when Haley’s term as Speaker of the House was done.
I do not recall when Saco called itself a sanituary city
Why was Gov. Milles left out of the picture?
In a normal America even a local Democrat would object to their town knowingly hiring a mentally diminished pedophile, an extortionist, and a vengeful serial liar who has looked out for his own best interests rather than his fellow man his entire “working” life to drive a school bus full of children. Yet, these same people want him to be our president and “leader of the free world”? I’d say there is something intrinsically wrong with them and to never trust them to be anywhere near Augusta or DC. Oops! That ship has sailed.
We Mainer’s have continued to elect jello spine, weak mental lemmings to represent the state and we have become the laughing stock of the nation with the exception of NY with AOC. These representatives want to take away our guns, allow unborn children to be murdered in the most grisly way possible in the womb and give away hard earned tax dollars to illegals who never should should have been able to cross the border to begin with. It is time to wake up and sweep away all the debris that has accumulated these many years and get fresh blood in the elected seats.
ME politician’s are lying commie cucks with the sole purpose to serve the “state”.
You libs all deserve what you got coming by voting for these nation destroying communists, soon Maine will be no different than NY, IL, CA etc….
“It’s up to the Democrats to decide whom they want their nominee to be…” says Collins. It surely is not up to voters/proles, not in that party
Tards on a plane . But it’s okay— keep FJB on the ticket
Biden has always been a vulgar, corrupt, perverse liar. Now he has dementia.
Maine’s congressional representatives are complete failures in their jobs. Anyone can see the illegal occupant of the People’s House, is not fit to be the Commander of anything, let alone the USA. Compare current videos of him versus videos from 5 years ago. The difference is obvious and no you don’t need to be a board certified Dr. to understand what’s going on. The pretending and gaslighting is over. Xiden should be removed using the 15th Ammendment or impeachment…chose your weapon.
Harris rationalized Biden’s mental incapacity by saying it was due to stress from the Hamas attack. So . . . what does WWIII do to him? As some are saying, Harris WAS selected as VP to protect Biden from the 25th – they don’t come much dumber.
They cant win with Biden in such diminished capacity. Trump would eat him alive during any debates. Hell a 3rd grader could disassemble Biden on live TV. They want him to “resign”, and give them time to replace a new front for Obama and his apparatus. The fundamental transformation is almost complete. Gavin Newsom has had interviews with world leaders and “town halls”. Kamala is hopeless, but shes part black, so they might still roll with it. You wont have Biden on the ticket.
Wait, wait, wait I thought Anus King was an independent? Maybe I was right all along. He just doesn’t have the guts to admit that he is a demoKKKrat.
Oh, those Dems are squirming, as they loose their grip to stay afloat! They know about Biden’s approval from a Gallup survey published 1/25/24. His third year in office was the lowest of any U.S. president since President Carter. Their ship is sinking fast.
Bernie Sanders once said of Democrats, “They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats. The Democratic Party doesn’t stand for anything besides its donors.”
Collins is right about one thing, “It’s up to the voters.” We the People will vote Democrats politicians out! We’re all so fed up!
Maine Democrat politicians are insane…Have you heard about Rep Lydia Crafts (District 46) big idiotic idea, LD 1971? She wants Maine to legalize cocaine and heroin, making our state the magnet for druggies across the USA. Add that to the Demise Soup she and Mills are cooking up for us with their undocumented worker push…yup, real tasty but, We the People aren’t swallowing any of it!
RUN JOE RUN!!!! NEVER GIVE UP. DON’T LISTEN TO THEM. TAKE YOUR TEAM TO THE FINISH LINE!!! (and make sure your butts been wiped).
Not a lot of brainpower in this group – just warhawks.
I heard a related comment by FLOTUS Jill that she “watches Joe every day, and he gets more done in one hour than anyone else can in a full day.”
Watching out for your hubby is one thing, but telling lies so obvious to the public as shameless fantasy is disgusting, and a “threat to our democracy,” to borrow a term I heard somewhere.