Ex-Clinton adviser jokes he ‘wet the bed’ over special counsel report on Biden classified docs: ‘Terrible for Democrats’
Paul Begala, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, joked Friday that he “wet the bed” over the findings in Special Counsel Robert Hur’s scathing report on President Biden’s handling of classified documents.
“Look, I’m a Biden supporter. And I slept like a baby last night. I woke up every two hours and wet the bed,” the Democratic strategist quipped during an appearance on CNN.
Hur’s bombshell report asserts that Biden, 81, “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” but should not face criminal charges, in part because a jury may view the president as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
“This is terrible for Democrats. And anybody with a functioning brain knows that,” Begala said of the 388-page report, released Thursday.
After the report dropped, Biden lashed out at reporters and the Republican special counsel in remarks delivered at the White House, during which he declared, “I know what the hell I’m doing” and “my memory is fine.”
Begala, the former chief strategist for the 1992 Clinton-Gore campaign, argued that Biden should have taken a different tact.
“Instead of calling a press conference and saying, ‘I really am sharp,’ you attack the other guy,” he explained.
Key takeaways from special counsel Robert Hur's report on Biden's classified documents
- Joe Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials” after leaving the vice presidency in January 2017.
- Classified documents about the war in Afghanistan were found in a box in the garage at Biden’s main residence in Wilmington, Del.
- Biden repeatedly disclosed classified information he wrote in notebooks to Mark Zwonitzer, who ghostwrote Biden’s 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad.”
- During one February 2017 conversation, Biden told Zwonitzer, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs” at his then-home in Virginia.
- Zwonitzer deleted recordings of his interviews with Biden after learning of Hur’s appointment as special counsel in January 2023.
- Biden displayed “significant limitations in memory,” both in his 2017 interviews with Zwonitzer and his interviews with investigators on Oct. 8-9, 2023.
- Among other lapses, Biden “did not remember when he was vice president” and “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”
- If brought to trial, Biden “would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
“I remember he was vice president and he said, ‘Don’t compare us to the Almighty, compare us to the alternative.’ So, everything with Biden has to be not ‘I am great,’ but ‘the other guy’s really damaging, dangerous, a threat.’”
“This is gonna be a really rough, ugly, unpleasant campaign,” Begala predicted of the expected general election rematch between Biden and former President Donald Trump.
“They gotta tell Democrats, ‘Look, vote for the old guy, support the old guy, it’s important,’” he said of what the Biden campaign’s approach should be.
Beglala also suggested that Biden should make more public remarks leading up to November, despite his proneness to gaffes.
“I want to see more Joe Biden – the gaffes are built in,” he argued. “But instead of simply saying, ‘I’m okay,’ he just simply needs to be on the attack – 24/7 for the next 269 days.”