Biden's rough week highlights his biggest vulnerability — one he can't change

When President Biden is the focus and not Donald Trump, it's generally not a good thing for the president and his reelection prospects.

That's because, like Trump, Biden has glaring vulnerabilities. His biggest one was front and center this week: concerns about his age.

The special counsel report about Biden's handling of classified material didn't charge him with a crime, but special counsel Robert Hur, a Republican, seemed to go out of his way to include damning commentary about Biden's supposedly faulty memory, like referencing that Biden, 81, "did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died."

That was stinging.

"It clears him legally and kneecaps him politically," Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, said of the report.

Biden slips up while defending himself

The 388-page report set off a political firestorm — and an ensuing clumsy response from the White House and the president himself.

Biden angrily rejected Hur's claim, saying Thursday night in a press conference he felt questions about Beau weren't "any of their damn business."

The president got choked up while showing a rosary he was wearing on his wrist in memory of Beau, then thundered, "I don't need anyone to remind me when he passed away."

If Biden had left it at that, that might be what people remembered about the news conference.

Instead, Biden wound up walking right into the stereotype laid out by Hur when he mistakenly said that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt was the "president of Mexico" while answering a question about current hostage negotiations with Israel and Hamas.

How the report fed into an existing narrative

It's a mistake. Verbal slips happen. Everyone makes them — including