Current Event Report

Class assignment

Event: White House Press Conference -

 

Event Date: February 8th, 2024

For my current event I chose to look at a conference President Biden gave on February 8th, 2024 where he discussed the findings of the investigation into his handling of classified documents while he was a private citizen. I’m going to be referencing the president's remarks as well as Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report.

President Biden responded to the release of Special Counsel Hur’s report with a press conference in which he forcefully denied that his mental state is in decline as the report concluded and asserted that he had been found to be exonerated of any wrongdoing in the matter. The president later went on to confuse Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as the president of Mexico–a mistake he has made with other heads of state as recently as the week prior. The seemingly rushed conference has since been described by the press as being a disaster for the president.

This event is relevant to section 6.3 of our textbook, “Making an Argument”. 

In the subsection of section 6.3 titled “Ethical Considerations in Persuasion” we are given 11 points to consider while communicating and the first item on the list is “do not use false, fabricated, misrepresented, distorted or irrelevant evidence to support arguments or claims”. At 2 minutes and 29 seconds into his address President Biden states, “The decision to decline criminal charges was straightforward. The evidence suggests that Mr. Biden did not willfully retain these documents. The evidence, he said, I did not willfully retain these documents” (Remarks). President Biden is either intentionally or mistakenly misrepresenting the conclusion of the special counsel's report, the executive summary of which states:
“Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen. These materials included (1) marked classified documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, and (2) notebooks containing Mr. Biden's handwritten entries about issues of national security and foreign policy implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods. FBI agents recovered these materials from the garage, offices, and basement den in Mr. Biden's Wilmington, Delaware home.
However, for the reasons summarized below, we conclude that the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt” (NPR).

The report then goes on to elaborate further on the decision of the Department of Justice not to seek charges in the case: “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview with him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” (NPR). In other words, the president is not being charged because a jury would likely be sympathetic to potential counterarguments of the elderly Biden’s memory issues–not because he was found to not have willfully violated the law.

I personally find it difficult to believe that President Biden read far enough through the special counsel’s report to understand the reason that the Department of Justice is not seeking charges is because of his apparent cognitive decline and become offended by this without also understanding that the report did not exonerate him of the allegations. Despite this President Biden stated the inverse, indicating either potential dishonesty on his part or lending further credibility to Special Counsel Hur’s reasoning for not pursuing charges. By doing this as well as confusing the Egyptian and Mexican heads of state, the president undermined his own position. I believe President Biden’s public image would have been better served by leaning into the ambiguity of the context surrounding the specific allegations in the report instead of misrepresenting the special counsel’s conclusion in its entirety.

            Works Cited:

Desk, Washington. “Read the Special Counsel’s Report on Biden’s Handling of Classified Documents.” NPR, NPR, 8 Feb. 2024, www.npr.org/2024/02/08/1229805332/special-counsel-report-biden-classified-documents.

“Remarks by President Biden.” The White House, The United States Government, 9 Feb. 2024, www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/02/08/remarks-by-president-biden/