Latest news with #Hur
Time of India
19-06-2025
- Climate
- Time of India
Hurricane Erick slams into Mexico as Category 3 storm: are you in the danger zone? Flash floods, red alerts, and evacuations hit Oaxaca and Guerrero — here's what you need to know
Hurricane Erick makes landfall in Mexico as Category 3 storm, triggers evacuations and flash flooding- Hurricane Erick made landfall early Thursday morning on Mexico's southern Pacific coast, hitting as a Category 3 hurricane after earlier reaching Category 4 strength. With wind speeds of around 125 mph, the storm struck just east of Punta Maldonado, moving inland through Oaxaca and Guerrero, forcing evacuations, closing schools, and setting off dangerous flash floods. While the storm slightly weakened before landfall, officials warned that it would still cause life-threatening floods, mudslides, and storm surge, especially in mountainous and coastal areas. More than 2,000 emergency shelters were set up across Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Chiapas, and Mexico's Civil Protection authorities issued a red alert in multiple regions. Erick, the fifth named storm in the eastern Pacific this year, is expected to weaken further as it moves inland, with forecasters from the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicting it could dissipate by early Friday. How strong is Hurricane Erick? Erick intensified rapidly in less than 24 hours, morphing from a moderate hurricane into what experts called an 'extremely dangerous' system. This rapid strengthening, driven by warm ocean waters and favorable atmospheric conditions, turned Erick into the first major hurricane of the Eastern Pacific season —and the earliest "E" storm on record. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Doutor: Manter a massa muscular após os 50 anos depende deste hábito noturno Revista do Homem Saiba Mais Undo The storm made landfall near western Oaxaca , packing sustained winds around 125 mph (205 kph) after briefly reaching Category 4 intensity overnight. Where exactly did Hurricane Erick make landfall? Hurricane Erick came ashore around 6 a.m. local time near Punta Maldonado in western Oaxaca, moving northwest through the region. At the time of landfall, Erick had maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, making it a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Earlier on Wednesday night, it had intensified rapidly from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane, with its wind speeds doubling in just hours. Live Events According to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, the storm was expected to produce 8 to 12 inches of rain across most areas it passed, with some locations possibly receiving up to 16 inches, especially in high-risk regions of Oaxaca and Guerrero. Which areas are under red alert? Authorities in Oaxaca and Guerrero declared a red alert , Mexico's highest warning level, urging residents to take shelter immediately. The storm's path stretched from Acapulco to Puerto Ángel , prompting widespread evacuations, school closures, and a halt to non-essential activities. More than 500 emergency shelters were opened, and over 18,000 emergency personnel were deployed across the affected states. Which areas and cities were hit hardest by Hurricane Erick? Hurricane Erick made a destructive landfall along Mexico's southern Pacific coast, bringing devastating winds, flash floods, and dangerous surf. Here's a breakdown of the most affected locations: Direct hit and landfall area: Santiago Pinotepa Nacional, Oaxaca – Official landfall site; experienced the full force of Erick's 125 mph winds. Punta Maldonado – Located just east of landfall, hit by storm surge and heavy rain. Severely impacted coastal cities: Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca – A popular tourist area now battling powerful waves, flooding, and wind damage. Puerto Ángel, Oaxaca – Under hurricane warning; coastal infrastructure under threat. Salina Cruz, Oaxaca – Facing flooding concerns and strong wind gusts. Huatulco, Oaxaca – Reports of damage at hospitals; rough seas batter the coastline. Acapulco, Guerrero – Under red alert; residents still recovering from past hurricane trauma now face another major threat. Broader danger zone: States on red alert : Oaxaca Guerrero Additional areas under flood watch : Chiapas Michoacán Colima Jalisco These regions are dealing with up to 16–20 inches of rainfall , severe flash flood risk, and potential mudslides in mountainous zones. What kind of damage is expected? The biggest threats aren't just from wind—though gusts toppled trees and damaged homes—but from relentless rainfall. Meteorologists are warning of up to 16 inches (40 cm) of rain in some areas, raising fears of life-threatening flash floods and mudslides, especially in mountainous terrain. Coastal regions are also bracing for storm surge and waves up to 33 feet (10 meters). What emergency actions did Mexico take before Hurricane Erick arrived? In preparation for the storm, Mexican authorities responded swiftly. Over 2,000 temporary shelters were established in Guerrero, Oaxaca, and Chiapas. A hurricane warning was issued for a 300-mile stretch of coastline from Puerto Ángel to Acapulco. President Claudia Sheinbaum urged residents living in low-lying areas, near rivers or waterways, to evacuate to these shelters and avoid venturing out. ' If you are in low-lying areas, near rivers, near waterways, it is best for you to go to shelters... Anyone who has a boat should not go out, ' Sheinbaum emphasized during a Wednesday morning news conference. How have local communities and infrastructure been impacted? The storm caused widespread disruption even before landfall. In Lagunas de Chacahua, over 100 residents — many of them fishermen and tourism workers — took refuge in schools. In Salina Cruz, a vital seaport in Oaxaca, streets were flooded, and cars were left stranded. Local police worked through the day clearing rocks, debris, and fallen branches from blocked roads. Residents and business owners in Puerto Escondido boarded up windows in anticipation, and tourists were advised to remain indoors. In affected areas of Oaxaca, schools were closed for the second day in a row, according to Emilio Montero Pérez, the state's education chief. Is flooding the biggest concern with Hurricane Erick? Yes, according to the National Hurricane Center, the greatest threats are heavy rainfall, flash floods, and dangerous mudslides. The forecast of up to 16 inches of rain in some locations raises the alarm, particularly for mountainous terrain where saturated soil can trigger deadly landslides. Authorities are closely watching dams and rivers to prevent overflow. Coastal areas are also experiencing large waves and strong swells, increasing the risk of storm surge and flooding along beaches and river mouths. How does Hurricane Erick compare to past storms in Mexico? Hurricane Erick's rapid intensification has drawn comparisons to Hurricane Otis, which struck Mexico's Pacific coast in 2023 as a Category 5 hurricane, killing over 50 people and devastating the city of Acapulco. Otis's damage included sunken yachts, flattened homes, and destroyed hotels. While Erick made landfall with less intensity than Otis, its fast development and projected rainfall totals are serious enough that authorities are urging residents not to underestimate the threat. As the fifth named storm of the 2025 Pacific hurricane season, Erick highlights ongoing concerns about stronger and faster-developing tropical systems. What should locals and tourists do now? Authorities are urging everyone in the danger zones to: Follow evacuation orders without delay. Avoid rivers, hillsides, and low-lying areas vulnerable to flooding or landslides. Stay away from beaches , as rough surf and deadly rip currents are expected to persist even after the storm weakens. As Hurricane Erick continues inland, its winds are expected to die down, but the danger from flooding, mudslides, and rough seas remains very real. Residents across Oaxaca and Guerrero are being urged to stay sheltered, avoid travel, and follow updates from Civil Protection and the National Hurricane Center. With heavy rain forecast through Friday, the focus now shifts to managing post-landfall conditions and ensuring safety in affected communities. FAQs: Q1: Where did Hurricane Erick make landfall in Mexico? Hurricane Erick made landfall near Punta Maldonado, in Oaxaca. Q2: How strong was Hurricane Erick when it hit Mexico? Hurricane Erick hit as a Category 3 storm with winds around 125 mph.
The Hill
10-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Why Biden's health cover-up is worse than Watergate
Jake Tapper, one of the co-authors of 'Original Sin,' the inside account of President Joe Biden's decline, told Piers Morgan last month that the cover-up of Biden's health was 'maybe even worse than Watergate.' Except it's not 'maybe.' For more than four years, Biden perpetuated the biggest fraud on the American people in the history of the republic. And all the president's men and women were his co-conspirators. Every day, they told the public that Biden was not just physically and cognitively fine, but that he was in better shape than anyone in the White House. White House officials not only dismissed questions about Biden's age and acuity but claimed he was so fit that he was wearing his staff out. On one of the rare occasions when the liberal media gently inquired about Biden's health, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, told CNN that 'I can't even keep up with him.' This is from the same woman who told the country that videos of Biden falling down and wandering off were 'cheap fakes.' She lied. They all did. All administrations bend the truth. But the Biden team went further than any other. When Special Counsel Robert Hur issued his report last February, in which he noted that Biden had broken the law but that a jury would likely not convict because they would find him to be 'well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,' Biden responded with a tirade against Hur for asking in the interview about when his son Beau had passed away — which Biden could not remember. 'How in the hell dare he raise that?' Biden shouted indignantly. But Hur never asked about it. It was Biden who had brought up Beau's death in a meandering, nonsensical reply to a question about where in his house he had placed classified documents. The rest of the White House piled on Hur, with Kamala Harris leading the charge. She called Hur's description of Biden's faltering memory 'gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate.' It was none of those. Everything Hur stated was true. Hur showed enormous restraint and decency in dealing with Biden. How was he rewarded? According to Tapper and Alex Thompson, Hur was blackballed by the legal establishment and could not find a job for months. Even as they were smearing this honest public servant, White House officials continued to peddle the idea that Joe Biden was, at age 81, almost superhuman. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Meet the Press that 'The most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused.' No, he wasn't. Biden was largely incapacitated, worked only a few hours a day and couldn't recognize long-term friends and staffers. It wasn't until June 2024, after Biden's debate, that the farce could no longer hold. But even in the wake of that disaster, Biden and company kept lying to everyone, insisting that Biden only had a cold and was still up to the task of running against Trump — and serving another four years. Only after intense pressure from his own party did Biden finally, and reluctantly, drop out. And we know now that Biden likely had cancer. According to a Biden spokesman, Biden last had a prostate specific antigen test 11 years ago. Having compassion for Biden at this time does not preclude asking why he wasn't tested, or if that is simply another lie. House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has announced his committee will ask members of the Biden administration to testify about what they knew and when they knew about Biden's health. The public deserves answers but more than that, those who engaged in the sham need to be held accountable. It's worth remembering that, as a first-term senator from Delaware, while Biden reportedly advocated for fairness and not rushing to judgment, he demanded accountability from President Nixon during the Watergate affair and ultimately called for Nixon's resignation. There is a key difference between Nixon and Watergate and Biden and his decline. While Nixon certainly tried to limit the fallout from the Watergate break-in, he did not know of, order, or approve the Watergate break-in. He only learned of it after the burglars were arrested. Biden, on the other hand, from the beginning of his presidency, orchestrated his administration's malfeasance. From the moment he announced his candidacy in 2019, Biden was deliberately lying to the country when he claimed he was in great health. He also insisted that all his aides repeat that canard. None of this was true, but thanks to a compliant media, which Nixon certainly did not have during Watergate, he was shielded from the public. By 2024, he was working a few days a day, a couple of days a week, and was clearly not in charge of the White House or the country. That was criminal. For at least a year, likely longer, the U.S. did not have a functioning president, and the president's men and women knew it. Yet they lied and covered it up. And that is far, far worse than Watergate. Justin Coffey is a professor of history at Quincy University.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
CNN's Tapper rips media smear campaign against Hur, WSJ report on Biden decline without mentioning own network
CNN anchor Jake Tapper has taken aim at the media's treatment of those who sounded the alarm about former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline before it was fully exposed at the now-infamous presidential debate, despite the fact that his own network was guilty of lobbing such attacks. As Biden was actively seeking reelection, there were two explosive moments that drew attention to his mental acuity before the debate. The first was in February 2024 with the release of the Hur report, which determined the Justice Department would not seek criminal charges over the then-president's mishandling of classified information, in part because a jury would deem him as a "sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory." The report also revealed Biden couldn't remember key dates, such as when he was in office and when his son Beau died. The second was in June 2024, weeks before the debate, when The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report titled, "Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping," a months-long investigation by reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes involving more than 45 sources who were either directly involved or briefed on meetings with Biden, who they said "appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones." Jake Tapper Declares Biden White House Lied About 'Cheap Fakes' After Cnn Peddled Narrative In 2024 On Bari Weiss' "Honestly" podcast Thursday, Tapper spoke about how the Biden White House went to "war" with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who he described to Weiss as a "serious civil servant," and how members of the media participated. "A lot of people in the media are very complicit and part of the smear machine against Robert Hur," Tapper told Weiss. "Robert Hur is smeared and cannot get a job for months. And he was – honestly, if you look back at what he said, that was polite!" Read On The Fox News App Shielding Biden: Journalists Shed Light On The Media's Cover-up Of A Weakened President He also praised "great reporters" Linksey and Hughes, noting they, too, were viciously attacked. "[They] are garroted by the Democratic Party and by journalists and by media critics, and by journalism professors and this whole industry of people who claim to be non-partisan assessors of truth… that had to have been traumatizing for them," Tapper said. What Tapper failed to mention was that CNN was among those "complicit" in Team Biden's attacks on Hur and The Wall Street Journal. Jim Acosta, who at the time was Tapper's CNN colleague, wondered aloud if Hur's assessment was "out of bounds," while CNN commentator and former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield accused Hur of "editorializing" his report, and then-CNN political analyst John Avlon wondered why "some spin on the ball" was included. One of CNN's go-to legal experts, Jeffrey Toobin, scolded Hur for making "unnecessary points" about Biden's advanced age, characterizing the special counsel as a "Republican partisan" who "trashed" the president despite not bringing charges. "Part of that report was an outrage, was a disgrace," Toobin said at the time. "I mean, the idea that they that he would make such a big point of Biden being elderly is not something a prosecutor needed to do." Credibility Crisis: Press Dismissed Hur Report On Biden's Memory Issues Long Before Concerns Became Undeniable CNN liberal pundit Paul Begala similarly attacked the "partisan Trumper" for "editorializing way out of his league," even suggesting Hur was motivated to seek revenge on Biden for voting against William Rehnquist, for whom Hur had clerked, during his Supreme Court confirmation as Chief Justice in 1986 when Biden served as a senator. "This guy has donated to Republicans. He is a partisan," Begala said. "The only job he had was to indict or not indict, and to add all this — the only thing he didn't add was the legal disclaimer that this is a political ad in support of Donald Trump. It was a total cheap shot." CNN's then-senior political analyst Gloria Borger immediately took Biden's side, insisting, "This is not a man who's going to forget the day his son died" and echoed Biden's falsehood that Hur was the one who brought up Beau's death in the interview when, in fact, it was the president. Perhaps Biden's biggest defender at CNN at the time was its media reporter, Oliver Darcy (who has since left the network), who declared Hur's depiction of Biden's mental state "didn't match reality." "The acknowledgement from some, but not all, news outlets on Tuesday about the true nature of Biden's deposition marked another embarrassing moment for the national press, which has floundered at pivotal moments in the lead up to the crucial 2024 presidential election," Darcy wrote in March 2024. "The deposition transcripts not only indicated that Biden appeared fairly sharp during his testimony, joking with investigators and retelling stories with granular detail, but that Hur was misleading in how he presented some of the information included in his report." "Hur chose to portray the president as a mentally diminished elderly man who struggled to recall basic information during his deposition, raising alarm bells about whether he had the fitness to serve in the nation's highest office. Hur's characterization of Biden played directly into a years-long campaign waged by Biden's political opponents and the powerful right-wing media machine to depict the president as a senile, aloof man," he continued. Credibility Crisis: Biden's Late-night Allies Go Quiet After Damning Cognitive Decline Revelations Following The Wall Street Journal's report, several CNN anchors stressed that the paper's story heavily relied on Republican criticism of Biden and called out former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who gave the only on-the-record statement, for appearing to flip-flop on Biden's sharpness in previous comments (the Journal reporters later explained it as a tactical PR move at the time for McCarthy to bolster cooperation with the Biden White House). CNN's Boris Sanchez grilled Hughes over Democratic allegations that her story was "slanted," a question that would be unfathomable to a journalist covering Donald Trump. Darcy erupted at The Wall Street Journal, insisting its reporting "suffers from glaring problems," lecturing the paper it "owes its readers — and the public — better." "It is difficult to imagine that the newspaper, or any outlet, would run a similar story declaring that Trump is 'slipping' behind the scenes based on the word of top Democratic figures — despite the fact that the Democratic leadership has demonstrated a much stronger relationship with the truth in recent years than their Republican counterparts," Darcy wrote. Credibility Crisis: Wall Street Journal Report On Biden 'Slipping' Was Smeared By Media "More broadly speaking, The Journal's piece pointed to a continued problem roiling the news media as it covers the 2024 election. Trump is permitted to fall asleep in court and make nonsensical public statements on a routine basis without any serious questions raised about his mental acuity," the ex-CNN pundit continued. "Meanwhile, Biden is judged on an entirely different standard." A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment. Original article source: CNN's Tapper rips media smear campaign against Hur, WSJ report on Biden decline without mentioning own network
New York Post
04-06-2025
- Health
- New York Post
CNN's Jake Tapper rips media smear campaign against Hur, WSJ report on Biden decline without mentioning own network
CNN anchor Jake Tapper has taken aim at the media's treatment of those who sounded the alarm about former President Joe Biden's cognitive decline before it was fully exposed at the now-infamous presidential debate, despite the fact that his own network was guilty of lobbing such attacks. As Biden was actively seeking reelection, there were two explosive moments that drew attention to his mental acuity before the debate. The first was in February 2024 with the release of the Hur report, which determined the Justice Department would not seek criminal charges over the then-president's mishandling of classified information, in part because a jury would deem him as a 'sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.' The report also revealed Biden couldn't remember key dates, such as when he was in office and when his son Beau died. The second was in June 2024, weeks before the debate, when The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report titled, 'Behind Closed Doors, Biden Shows Signs of Slipping,' a months-long investigation by reporters Annie Linskey and Siobhan Hughes involving more than 45 sources who were either directly involved or briefed on meetings with Biden, who they said 'appears slower now, someone who has both good moments and bad ones.' 5 Jake Tapper appears during a book conversation in New York City on May 27, 2025. Getty Images On Bari Weiss' 'Honestly' podcast Thursday, Tapper spoke about how the Biden White House went to 'war' with Special Counsel Robert Hur, who he described to Weiss as a 'serious civil servant,' and how members of the media participated. 'A lot of people in the media are very complicit and part of the smear machine against Robert Hur,' Tapper told Weiss. 'Robert Hur is smeared and cannot get a job for months. And he was – honestly, if you look back at what he said, that was polite!' He also praised 'great reporters' Linksey and Hughes, noting they, too, were viciously attacked. '[They] are garroted by the Democratic Party and by journalists and by media critics, and by journalism professors and this whole industry of people who claim to be non-partisan assessors of truth… that had to have been traumatizing for them,' Tapper said. 5 President Joe Biden is helped up by Secret Service and Air Force Academy officials after falling on stage during the Air Force Academy graduation in Colorado Springs on June 1, 2023. AFP via Getty Images What Tapper failed to mention was that CNN was among those 'complicit' in Team Biden's attacks on Hur and The Wall Street Journal. im Acosta, who at the time was Tapper's CNN colleague, wondered aloud if Hur's assessment was 'out of bounds,' while CNN commentator and former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield accused Hur of 'editorializing' his report, and then-CNN political analyst John Avlon wondered why 'some spin on the ball' was included. One of CNN's go-to legal experts, Jeffrey Toobin, scolded Hur for making 'unnecessary points' about Biden's advanced age, characterizing the special counsel as a 'Republican partisan' who 'trashed' the president despite not bringing charges. 'Part of that report was an outrage, was a disgrace,' Toobin said at the time. 'I mean, the idea that they that he would make such a big point of Biden being elderly is not something a prosecutor needed to do.' CNN liberal pundit Paul Begala similarly attacked the 'partisan Trumper' for 'editorializing way out of his league,' even suggesting Hur was motivated to seek revenge on Biden for voting against William Rehnquist, for whom Hur had clerked, during his Supreme Court confirmation as Chief Justice in 1986 when Biden served as a senator. 'This guy has donated to Republicans. He is a partisan,' Begala said. 'The only job he had was to indict or not indict, and to add all this — the only thing he didn't add was the legal disclaimer that this is a political ad in support of Donald Trump. It was a total cheap shot.' CNN's then-senior political analyst Gloria Borger immediately took Biden's side, insisting, 'This is not a man who's going to forget the day his son died' and echoed Biden's falsehood that Hur was the one who brought up Beau's death in the interview when, in fact, it was the president. 5 US State's Attorney Robert Hur speaks to the press after a court hearing in Baltimore on Nov. 21, 2019. TNS via Getty Images Perhaps Biden's biggest defender at CNN at the time was its media reporter, Oliver Darcy (who has since left the network), who declared Hur's depiction of Biden's mental state 'didn't match reality.' 'The acknowledgement from some, but not all, news outlets on Tuesday about the true nature of Biden's deposition marked another embarrassing moment for the national press, which has floundered at pivotal moments in the lead up to the crucial 2024 presidential election,' Darcy wrote in March 2024. 'The deposition transcripts not only indicated that Biden appeared fairly sharp during his testimony, joking with investigators and retelling stories with granular detail, but that Hur was misleading in how he presented some of the information included in his report.' 'Hur chose to portray the president as a mentally diminished elderly man who struggled to recall basic information during his deposition, raising alarm bells about whether he had the fitness to serve in the nation's highest office. Hur's characterization of Biden played directly into a years-long campaign waged by Biden's political opponents and the powerful right-wing media machine to depict the president as a senile, aloof man,' he continued. 5 President Joe Biden stumbles up the stairs of Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews. C-SPAN Following The Wall Street Journal's report, several CNN anchors stressed that the paper's story heavily relied on Republican criticism of Biden and called out former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who gave the only on-the-record statement, for appearing to flip-flop on Biden's sharpness in previous comments (the Journal reporters later explained it as a tactical PR move at the time for McCarthy to bolster cooperation with the Biden White House). CNN's Boris Sanchez grilled Hughes over Democratic allegations that her story was 'slanted,' a question that would be unfathomable to a journalist covering Donald Trump. Darcy erupted at The Wall Street Journal, insisting its reporting 'suffers from glaring problems,' lecturing the paper it 'owes its readers — and the public — better.' 'It is difficult to imagine that the newspaper, or any outlet, would run a similar story declaring that Trump is 'slipping' behind the scenes based on the word of top Democratic figures — despite the fact that the Democratic leadership has demonstrated a much stronger relationship with the truth in recent years than their Republican counterparts,' Darcy wrote. 5 President Joe Biden makes the sign of the cross during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York City. Reuters 'More broadly speaking, The Journal's piece pointed to a continued problem roiling the news media as it covers the 2024 election. Trump is permitted to fall asleep in court and make nonsensical public statements on a routine basis without any serious questions raised about his mental acuity,' the ex-CNN pundit continued. 'Meanwhile, Biden is judged on an entirely different standard.' A spokesperson for CNN declined to comment.
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
No Regrets
Despicable. Outrageous. A smear. That's how Senate Democrats described special counsel Robert Hur's February 2024 report on President Joe Biden, in which Hur described Biden as 'a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.' More than a year later, the Hur report—in which the prosecutor explained why he opted not to charge Biden with classified records violations—has come back into focus with the release of the new book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again. The Dispatch's Michael Warren and Steve Hayes noted earlier this week that the release of the book and audio recordings of the Hur-Biden interviews is a vindication of Hur. Original Sin is 'an authoritative, detailed, and devastating account of one of the most consequential scandals in modern American history,' Hayes wrote, and a section on Hur is 'the most powerful part of the book.' Hur's description of Biden was not only accurate—as Biden's devastating performance at the June 2024 presidential debate with Donald Trump and subsequent decision to drop out of the race would reveal. It marked the last potential opportunity for Democrats to push out the president with time for a new candidate to run a real campaign. But rather than take that difficult but wiser path in February 2024, congressional Democrats circled the wagons around Biden. In the Capitol this week, The Dispatch asked a number of Senate Democrats if they had any regrets about how they reacted to Hur's report or thought they owed him an apology. None did. 'It is outrageous the way [Robert Hur] disrespected and maligned the president,' Sen. Tina Smith of Minnesota said in February 2024. 'What he said about the president not remembering the death of his beloved son [Beau] is just so despicable.' Hur reported that Biden was unable to recall the date of Beau Biden's death by 'several' years, and audio of the Hur-Biden interview confirmed the president said that Beau, who died in 2015, had 'either been deployed or is dying' in the 2017-18 timeframe. Given all that we know now, does Smith regret her comments? 'At the time, I had been around the president, and in the times I had been around him, he appeared to be functioning well and was on top of it, so that's what I thought at the time,' Smith told The Dispatch in the Capitol this week. Does she think Hur deserves an apology? 'That's just the way it rolls,' Smith replied. Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine said in February 2024 that Hur was a 'grandstander not a prosecutor,' adding that he expected Biden would be 'very vigorously engaged' when the campaign heated up. In the Capitol this week, Kaine told The Dispatch: 'I had one interaction with Joe Biden in the last 18 months, and it was the State of the Union. And he was fantastic.' He said he didn't owe Hur an apology because he had included information 'extraneous to his report.' As Hur explained at the time, he needed to include in his report his rationale for why he declined to prosecute Biden on the documents charges—and his rationale relied heavily on his belief a jury would not convict a man with Biden's apparent memory problems. Former Obama administration official Tommy Vietor posted on X earlier this week that the book Original Sin caused him to reevaluate his February 2024 attack on Hur. 'I found the context about the Hur report to be some of the most interesting/revelatory information in ORIGINAL SIN,' Vietor posted on X. 'At the time, Hur's comments about Biden being an 'elderly man with a poor memory' seemed like Jim Comey-style inappropriate editorializing about a non-charging decision. However, the book made me realize how important that context was for Hur in explaining his decision NOT to charge Biden, and I now feel that many of the attacks on Hur, including by me, weren't totally fair.' But there was no such public rethinking of attacks on Hur among congressional Democrats this week. 'When a prosecutor decides against bringing charges, generally, there's no public announcement,' Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut told The Dispatch. Blumenthal called Hur's comments 'gratuitous and unnecessary' back in February 2024. 'Whether [Hur is] telling the truth or not, there are things prosecutors don't get to say,' Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island told The Dispatch this week. 'I think it was out of line.' Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California, who said last year that Hur chose to 'politically slime' Biden, declined to take a question from The Dispatch as he rushed to a vote. Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said in February 2024 of Hur's report: 'It was just a smear and cheap shots and just taking things out of context, or even just inventing.' In the Capitol this week Fetterman, who has had questions raised about his own mental status following an in-depth report in New York magazine, did not directly address his criticism of Hur when asked about it. 'I don't know why we're still talking about Biden,' Fetterman told The Dispatch, adding: 'Honestly, I never thought the race was winnable anyway.' Asked about the Hur report this week, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut simply told The Dispatch: 'I didn't pay much attention to that report when it came out.' But he and others probably should have been paying attention. The Hur report came on the heels of Biden declining to sit for an softball interview before the Super Bowl—a traditional stop that is functionally a multi-million dollar campaign ad that reaches exactly the type of voter who doesn't pay much attention to politics. Days before the Hur report, Biden had confused French president Emmanuel Macron for President Francois Mitterrand, who died in 1996. The very same week, he confused recent German Chancellor Angela Merkel for Helmut Kohl, who was chancellor in the 1990s. Any one of these things in isolation might have been written off as nothing serious, but adding this public evidence together should have been setting off alarm bells—before the Hur report came out. Congressional Democrats could have responded to the report by demanding that Biden immediately release audio of his interview with Hur and immediately prove himself in public interviews. Instead, they chose to shoot the messenger.
