Joe Biden just denied he was mentally unfit – then made things even worse

Joe Biden tried to brush off concerns about his mental fitness and memory on Thursday at an impromptu press conference – but he made a glaring mistake that undermined his indignant defence of his abilities.

In isolation, it was perhaps just another relatively minor moment of misspeaking for the president, but it came at exactly the wrong moment.

He spoke to reporters on Thursday evening after the release of a special prosecutor’s report on the investigation into his handling of classified materials discovered at his home and workspace at a DC-area think-tank. The 388-page report itself did not indict the president’s character or indeed recommend any criminal charges be filed, but strongly called into question his ability to remember important details about his own life and time in the White House from 2009-2017 under Barack Obama.

In one heartbreaking passage that spread like wildfire across Washington DC, the special counsel’s team, led by Robert Hur, even asserted that the president had been unable to recall “even within several years, when his son [Beau Biden] died”. Beau, the president’s eldest son and with political ambitions himself, died of brain cancer in 2015 aged 46.

There were also references to Mr Biden being supposedly unable to remember the date range of his vice presidency.

Two versions of Mr Biden emerged to fight those characterisations on Thursday. The first came about in a private meeting with House Democrats, where the president was described as energised as he angrily swore at Mr Hur and his team’s conclusions: “How the f*** could I forget the day my son died?!” he was reported by The Washington Post as saying.

Another version, still angry but more reserved, appeared at his press conference early in