A news conference featuring an angry and combative President Joe Biden on Thursday night didn't go well, Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., said Friday.
Biden responded to Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hurt's report on his handling of classified documents. Hur determined no criminal charges should be filed against Biden, even though his investigation found the president "willfully" retained and disclosed highly classified materials when he was a private citizen, including documents about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan.
"I'm a senior Democratic politician, I've been doing this for a long time, that's not the way you want to do it," Smith, ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, said, according to Newsweek. "He was angry; he was frustrated by what came out. There was not a prepared clear agenda of, Here's my explanation; here's what I'm doing. It didn't go well ... there's no doubt about that."
Biden lashed out at a reporter's question about Hur describing him "as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
"My memory is so poor, I let you speak," Biden barked.
After another reporter raised voters' concerns in polls about Biden's age — at 81, he is the oldest-serving president — he shouted, "That is your judgment."
Hur wrote that a reason he avoided charging Biden is the concern that "Mr. 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."
"Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt," Hur wrote. "It could be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his 80s — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness."
Biden responded: "I am well-meaning, and I'm an elderly man, and I know what the hell I'm doing."
He was set to end the news conference, but walked back to the lectern and said Israel's military response in the Gaza Strip to Hamas' terrorist attack was "over the top" and then referred to Egypt President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi as the president of Mexico.
Smith said "the most important thing" is Biden's record on the economy.
"He's negotiated a very difficult situation, coming out of the pandemic, dealing with a series of international crises, in a way that's been very coherent and has moved the policy forward," Smith said. "There's no doubt in my mind right now that he's capable of doing the job."