On Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN This Morning,” White House Counsel’s Office Spokesperson Ian Sams responded to a report on a transcript released by former Special Counsel Robert Hur showing Biden had to be reminded his son died in 2015, not in 2017 or 2018, by stating that “I think that the American people can see clearly that the President doesn’t need a reminder as to when his son died. He says right there, May 30.”
Co-host John Berman read from CNN’s reporting on the transcript which said, “The transcript shows that the President brought up his son amid a broader discussion about his handling of sensitive documents as he mulled his future after leaving public office after five decades. Asked where he kept papers that he was working on, Biden began a story framing the context as the 2017-2018 era. The President brought up his son Beau, who he said had encouraged him to remain politically engaged. ‘Remember, in this time frame, my son is either deployed or is dying,’ Biden said, according to the transcript. The President brought up his son’s death and he remembered the month and day: ‘What month did Beau die? Oh God, May 30.’ Several people in the room interjected to remind him that his son died in 2015.”
Berman then asked, “Not the 2017 to 2018 timeframe. Again, so this is more context about how the death of his son ever became an issue. It wasn’t as if — if I’m not mistaken, he wasn’t asked about the death of his son by the Special Counsel, was he?”
Sams responded, “The President was, in fact, asked about his work on his book, about his son’s passing, about his work after his vice presidency on the Biden Cancer Initiative, something that was so deeply motivated by Beau’s illness and passing. These are deeply personal and emotional issues for the President and he’s talked openly about those, to the American people, for years, about how he overcame that grief and how he worked through it and how he hoped to find a purpose beyond this grief. And that was what he was being asked about. And so, anybody who has even a familiarity with the President understands the personal nature of this and that he would talk about his son, Beau, and the impact that he had on the work that he was pursuing after his vice presidency on the book and on the cancer work. And I think that the American people can see clearly that the President doesn’t need a reminder as to when his son died. He says right there, May 30. This is something that the president carries with him every single day, the memory of losing his son. Families across this country understand the power of loss and grief and the way that that impacts someone. And this is a President who’s taken that loss and grief and turned it into purpose.”
Sams continued, “And I think it just goes to show, again, how outrageous it was for that to even be included in this report, and don’t take just my word for it. A former attorney general, a former deputy attorney general, former Justice Department prosecutors, senior officials, all came out in the aftermath of this report and said, this is totally inappropriate, you can make the point without talking about that. So, it just shows how outrageous it was for that to be included in the final report.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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