Democrats unnerved after release of Hur report, Biden response: 'This is terrible!’

Panic among Democrats is rising following a report from Special Counsel Robert Hur that described President Joe Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

Democratic strategist James Carville said the period after the report’s release has been bad for the Biden administration, including the president’s effort to address it at a news conference.

“Whatever language you use, I have not had a single person say, ‘Well, this really worked out well,’” he said, according to The Hill.

He added that Democrats are in "Hail Mary mode" and are hoping that former President Donald Trump will end up with a criminal conviction in at least one of the many prosecutions he is involved in to shift favor towards Biden. 

The special counsel's report, released on Thursday, concluded that Biden willfully retained classified documents from his time as vice president, he knew he had them as far back as 2017 and he shared them with an author who was ghostwriting his memoir. 

Hur recommended against prosecuting Biden due to the president's age and poor memory.

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz described the report on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show as a "great gift" to Republicans and Trump.

"This may determine the presidency of the United States, much like the way the Comey decision may have determined 2016," he said.

A former advisor to President Bill Clinton, Paul Begala, said on CNN that this report is "terrible for Democrats" and "anybody with a functioning brain knows that.”

"Real Time" host Bill Maher suggested that the Democrats could potentially "dump" Biden at the DNC convention and swap him out for another candidate. 

"You can switch him out at the convention… If a guy says 'I can't run,' then you have to do it. Then it has to be somebody else. Then it's an open convention. We've had open conventions many times… They make it up as they go along anyway. It's politics," Maher said, according to Fox News.

Democrat presidential candidate and Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips used the report as an opportunity to promote his campaign. 

"I’m the well-meaning, 55 year old man with a good memory who will defeat the ill-meaning, 77 year old man with a bad memory this November," Phillips wrote on the social media platform, X.

Former Obama advisor and CNN senior political analyst David Axelrod criticized Biden's press conference in response to the report, saying his "angry" attitude "reinforces the meme" that he's too old to be running the country. 

He said that Biden seems to be "reinforcing" people’s impression of him as being too old during a CNN interview with host Anderson Cooper. 

"Anderson, the most damaging things that can happen in politics – there are things that reinforce a meme that’s out there that is hurting you," Axelrod said, according to Fox News. "And the central meme that is hurting the president is this issue of age. It’s a big barrier."