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  • How Biden campaign, allies are doing damage control after special counsel report

    How Biden campaign, allies are doing damage control after special counsel report

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    The Biden-Harris campaign, its surrogates and allies were forced to do damage control on Friday after special counsel Robert Hur’s report about President Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents painted a scathing picture of his age and memory, raising new questions for voters nine months before the November election.

    Despite Hur not bringing criminal charges, his report levied what amounted to a political indictment against the 81-year-old president, with investigators writing that a main reason for not pursuing charges was because “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.”

    Biden clapped back in a hastily-scheduled news conference Thursday night, just hours after the report was released, telling reporters, “I’m well-meaning, and I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing.”

    Full speech: President Biden responds Thursday night to the special counsel’s report on his mishandling of classified documents.

    The president’s top surrogates, from Vice President Kamala Harris to congressional Democrats, kept pushing back on Friday, dismissing the special counsel’s report as “politically motivated” and “inappropriate.”

    The Biden campaign declined to comment when asked how it’s trying to quell renewed concerns about the president’s age.

    A source familiar with the campaign’s thinking told ABC News that Republicans attacking the president’s age is nothing new, saying that strategy didn’t work in 2020 and won’t work in 2024, when the source said voters value experience and wisdom as well.

    Here are five ways Biden allies are striking back:

    Hur is a Trump appointee and Republican

    Biden surrogates have been quick to point out that Robert Hur, a Republican, was appointed by former President Donald Trump to be U.S. Attorney in Maryland in 2018. However, it was Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden-appointee, who chose Hur to lead the investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.

    Some are now accusing Hur of having an agenda despite not having enough evidence to criminally indict Biden.

    “At the end of the day, it looks as though the special counsel couldn’t charge him with anything, so he just threw the books at him anyway,” said former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile, an ABC News contributor. “The report read like it was going to get published in the New York Post or on Trump campaign website. It did not read like a legal document.”

    Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in an interview with ABC News on Thursday, called the report’s descriptions of Biden “partisan editorializing by a Republican-appointed prosecutor.”

    “This is a Republican special counsel who completely went out of his way to editorialize, to include material in his report that is unnecessary and irrelevant to what he was tasked with doing,” Goldman said, of Hur. “The fact that he’s a Republican and he’s exonerating President Biden, he knows he’s going to be under attack because Republicans want to create this false equivalency between President Biden and former President Trump.”

    Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, at an unrelated news conference on Friday, deemed the comments by Hur “unfair” and “unnecessary,” also noting he was a Republican appointee.

    Governor JB Pritzker and other Democrats defended President Joe Biden Friday after the DOJ’s classified documents report commented on his memory.

    “I smell a rat in the comments that were made,” he told reporters.

    Hur had no comment.

    Doesn’t compare to Trump’s classified docs case

    Biden aides and allies say the bottom line is that while the investigation into Trump’s handling of classified documents ended with charges, Biden fully cooperated, and Hur decided there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.

    Juxtapose that, they say, to Trump’s case, in which he’s charged with obstructing efforts to secure the documents.

    Jim Messina, former President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign manager, urged his social media followers not to equate a “heavily editorialized special counsel’s report” as a bigger liability than the 91 criminal charges pending against Trump. (Trump has denied all wrongdoing).

    “Hur, a lifelong Republican and creature of DC, didn’t have a case against Biden, but he knew exactly how his swipes could hurt Biden politically,” Messina said in a post.

    “We’ve got to stop treating a single line in a gratuitously long, heavily editorialized special counsel’s report–in which no crime was found btw–by a partisan Republican investigator like it’s a bigger liability than Trump’s 91 criminal charges and being found liable for rape,” he said in another.

    Lauren Glassberg has the latest.

    Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, also highlighted on social media Friday the differences between Trump and Biden’s respective investigations.

    “Read the documents. It’s not hard. Biden fully cooperated. Trump obstructed at every turn,” he said in a post. “They know this. And they know how damaging their arguments are to Americans’ confidence in their democracy.”

    While Trump’s popularity among Republican voters has risen with each criminal indictment, according to his national polling average on 538, Biden’s mishandling of documents might not be as easily accepted by his base.

    There’s also a gap when it comes to perceptions of Trump, 77, and Biden, 81. A recent NBC News poll found 62% of voters have “major concerns” about Biden’s age whereas only 34% have “major concerns” about Trump’s age.

    The special counsel has no business making ‘gratuitous’ statements

    “Gratuitous” is swiftly becoming a buzzword for Democrats to describe the language they take issue with in Hur’s report.

    “The way that the president’s demeanor in that report was characterized, could not be more wrong on the facts and clearly, politically motivated, gratuitous,” said Vice President Kamala Harris, a former federal prosecutor. “When it comes to the role and responsibility of a prosecutor in a situation like that, we should expect that there will be a higher level of integrity than what we saw,” she added.

    The Democratic National Committee War Room on Friday blasted a press email listing nearly a dozen instances of other prosecutors and legal experts questioning whether Hur’s comments on Biden’s memory were appropriate, with the email characterizing them as “political cheap shots that came straight from MAGA Republican talking points.”

    Among the voices was former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder, who said in a post on X that the report had “many gratuitous remarks and is flatly inconsistent with long standing DOJ traditions.”

    Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, was among the first to characterize Hur’s criticisms of Biden’s memory as “inaccurate, gratuitous and wrong.”

    Recounting personal Biden stories about mental agility

    Biden allies are also offering first-hand accounts of Biden’s sharpness as they face renewed questions about his mental acuity.

    Goldman has recounted in multiple interviews how he spoke with Biden the day before the president’s voluntary interview with the special counsel on Oct. 8, the day after Hamas attacked Israel.

    “He was incredibly on point. His recall, his knowledge of a very tricky geopolitical situation was remarkable right off the bat. And he had spoken to a number of leaders, and he knew exactly where the pressure points were,” Goldman said. “And that’s where his age is so beneficial because he has 50 years of foreign policy experience.”

    DNC Chair Jaime Harrison also shared his Biden story in a post, moments after the president’s impromptu Thursday night news conference.

    “On AF1 I chatted with him on a myriad of topics from politics to family. Saw him bring down the house in SC talking about the promises made and the promises kept!” Harrison assured his followers.

    Other Democrats are flatly stating the undeniable truth: Biden is old.

    But so, they add, is Trump.

    “President Biden and former President Donald Trump have both old, and if that’s the only issue in the 2024 campaign, then the American people will have to judge between two elderly men,” Brazile said. “The president has has acknowledged that he is an elderly man, and he also has acknowledged that he’s still up to doing the work on behalf of the American people. I don’t know what else we can say.”

    Special counsel Robert Hur will not charge President Joe Biden for his handling of classified documents while out of office despite willful retention.

    The youngest member of Congress, Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., in a press call for the Biden-Harris campaign on an unrelated topic on Friday, flatly acknowledged Biden “is old” but deflected to the administration’s record, which he said is what Democrats will run on.

    “Number one, yes. OK. President Biden is old. OK. Yeah. It doesn’t sound like breaking news to me,” said Frost, who is 27. “When it comes down to how this is gonna impact folks down ballot and how Joe Biden’s candidacy will impact folks down ballot, I see nothing but positivity — because we’re looking at an agenda and we’re looking at a record that is positive.”

    Biden isn’t the only one confusing names – so are Trump and Johnson

    The report alleging Biden couldn’t recall the years he served as vice president or when his son, Beau, died, followed the president twice this week confusing European leaders with their dead predecessors — instances his allies are dismissing as common mistakes.

    “If he had a momentary blip where he couldn’t remember, as his mind is racing from the war in the Middle East to the questions that he’s been asking, I think that’s understandable for any of us,” Goldman told ABC News Live.

    After Biden mistakenly called Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi the president of Mexico during his news conference, surrogates were quick to pounce on the fact that Biden isn’t the only big-name politician to recently confuse a name.

    Goldman called it “nit-picking” and “inappropriate,” he said, “unless you’re also going to do it with Speaker Mike Johnson or anyone else who makes a mistake.”

    Notably, the House speaker confused Iran with Israel last week on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, and Trump, at a rally last month, twice mentioned Nikki Haley when he meant Nancy Pelosi. Trump has also repeatedly confused former President Barack Obama with Biden at recent rallies.

    Copyright © 2024 ABC News Internet Ventures.

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    ABCNews

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  • 3 Mental Blindspots That Could Explain Why Adidas Waited To Drop Ye

    3 Mental Blindspots That Could Explain Why Adidas Waited To Drop Ye

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    Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

    “Adidas does not tolerate antisemitism and any other sort of hate speech… the company has taken the decision to terminate the partnership with Ye immediately,” according to its October 25 news release. That statement conveys a principled and admirable stance against the antisemitism shown by the rapper formerly known as Kanye West after his antisemitic tweet on October 10 that he would go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”

    Yet Adidas waited much, much longer than other companies that cut ties with Ye. Even Ye’s own talent agency dropped him before Adidas. In fact, Adidas delayed so long that Ye taunted them on his October 16 appearance on the Drink Champs podcast, saying “I can say antisemitic things, and Adidas can’t drop me. Now what? Now what?”

    Related: ‘Unacceptable, Hateful and Dangerous’: Adidas, Gap Among Companies, Athletes Dropping Ye-Related Brands as the Rapper Loses Billionaire Status

    Adidas faced particular pressure to drop Ye due to its dark past. A German company founded by a former member of the Nazi party, Adidas had an especially strong reason to drop Ye earlier than other companies. Adidas faced mounting pressure from the Anti-Defamation League and other organizations to drop Ye given its Nazi past. A Change.org petition set up by the Campaign Against Antisemitism urging Adidas to sever ties with Ye had gathered 169,100 signatures by October 25.

    Yet Adidas refused to drop Ye until all the other companies dropped him. Instead of getting ahead of the problem and dropping Ye immediately after his October 10 anti-semitic tweet, or even his October 16 taunting of Adidas, the company had to be shamed and pressured into cutting its ties with Ye. As a result, Adidas seriously damaged its brand, harming its reputation among anyone opposed to antisemitism.

    What explains the poor decision-making by the Adidas leadership? It’s a classic case of the ostrich effect: A dangerous judgment error where our minds refuse to acknowledge negative information about reality. It’s named after the mythical notion that ostriches bury their heads in the sand at a sign of danger. The ostrich effect is a type of cognitive bias, one of many mental blindspots that impact decision-making in all life areas, ranging from the future of work to mental fitness.

    The Adidas leadership buried its head in the sand. It refused to acknowledge the growing damage to its brand from Ye’s antisemitism, as well as his prior bad behavior, such as having models wear “White Lives Matter” T-shirts in early October.

    Such denialism in professional settings happens more often than you might think. A four-year study of 286 organizations that had forced out their CEOs found that 23% were fired for denying reality, meaning refusing to recognize negative facts about their organization. Other research shows that professionals at all levels suffer from the tendency to deny uncomfortable facts.

    Adidas’ denialism likely stems from the cognitive bias known as the sunk costs fallacy. According to Adidas’ statement, the termination of the contract is expected to “have a short-term negative impact of up to €250 million on the company’s net income in 2022 given the high seasonality of the fourth quarter.” Presumably, the impact will be much higher in 2023, over half a billion at least.

    Related: Facebook to Ban Holocaust Denial, Citing Rise in Anti-Semitism

    The partnership with Ye had a long history since 2013 when the company signed his brand away from rival Nike. In 2016, Adidas further expanded its relationship with the rapper, calling it “the most significant partnership ever created between a non-athlete and an athletic brand.”

    In other words, Adidas invested a great deal of money and reputation into its relationship with Ye. That kind of investment causes our minds to feel strongly attached to whatever we put those resources into, and throw good money after bad.

    You’ll see this happen often in major projects that are working out poorly, such as Meta’s Metaverse project. Several high-profile industry figures recently criticized Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts. That includes Palmer Luckey, the founder of VR headset startup Oculus, which Meta acquired in 2014 for $2 billion. Luckey said “I don’t think it’s a good product” about Horizon Worlds, Meta’s core metaverse product. He called it a “project car,” a fancy automobile that the owner spends a lot of money on as a hobby. So far, Facebook’s shift to building the metaverse has been costly, with the company last year losing $10 billion on it, and Wall Street analysts expect it to lose more than $10 billion again this year.

    Similarly, you’ll see sunken costs in major relationships. That can range from marriages that lasted much longer than they should have to brand partnerships like the one between Adidas and Ye.

    The final cognitive bias relevant here is called hyperbolic discounting. This term describes our brain’s focus on short-term, highly visible outcomes over much more important and less visible long-term ones. Adidas didn’t want to take the short-term financial hit to its bottom line by cutting ties with Ye. However, Adidas failed to give sufficient weight to the long-term damage to its brand from failing to do so.

    Short-term financial damage is highly visible and painful, while long-term brand damage is much less visible and less painful. Yet realistically, such brand damage is much more important to the long-term success of Adidas.

    In my consulting, I’ve seen many executives struggling with the same three mental blindspots when they face top performers engaging in bad behaviors, ranging from incivility to sexual harassment and discrimination. Leaders deny it happened because they have so much invested in the top performer, whether a star salesperson or top data scientist and they don’t consider the long-term consequences to the organization’s culture and employee morale.

    In fact, it’s easy for anyone to fall for these three cognitive biases when someone whom you value behaves badly. Fortunately, forewarned is forearmed: Knowing about these three mental blindspots means you can watch out for these problems in your own professional and personal life.

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    Gleb Tsipursky

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