Politics
Matt Welch | From the October 2024 issue
The political/media establishment that lied to you about President Joe Biden will lie to you about the new Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
When Special Counsel Robert Hur in February declined to prosecute Biden over his technically illegal mishandling of classified documents, in part because a prospective jury would be disinclined to convict an "elderly man with a poor memory" who has "diminished faculties in advancing age," the reaction from the White House was swift and terrible.
"They don't know what they're talking about," the president snapped to reporters that evening. "My memory is fine." (Alas, not fine enough to prevent Biden at that same brief press conference from mixing up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico and falsely accusing Hur of bringing up during questioning the subject of his son Beau's death.)
Hur's assessment of the president's memory, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre charged the next day, was "gratuitous," "unacceptable," and "does not live in reality."
But the most over-the-top administration attack on the Department of Justice messenger, and on a message that would be so undeniable by July that Biden felt impelled to drop out of the presidential race, came from Harris.
"The way that the president's demeanor in that report was characterized could not be more wrong on the facts and [is] clearly politically motivated," Harris claimed at a community forum the day after Hur's report. "We should expect that there would be a higher level of integrity than what we saw."
We Americans have, through soul-deadening experience, come to expect a piddling level of integrity from our elected officials, particularly as they push ever higher up the greasy pole of political power. What makes Harris' February brazenness all the more difficult to digest this fall is the knowledge that an entire swath of allegedly truth-seeking individuals and institutions will be enthusiastically abetting the........