‘It Didn’t Go Well’: Dem Lawmaker Criticizes Biden’s ‘Angry’ Response to Special Counsel Report

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) criticized President Joe Biden for his “angry” response to Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report at a news conference yesterday.

Hur released a report yesterday, which concluded Biden should not be criminally charged for storing classified documents, but noted he was an “elderly man with a poor memory” who forgot the date of his eldest son’s death and when he served as vice president.

Biden reacted to those specific findings on Thursday by aggressively pushing back against questions from the press regarding his memory and allegedly cursed in a private meeting after Hur’s report was released.

During an interview on CNN on Friday, the Washington state lawmaker noted that Biden’s news conference was “not the way you want to do it” and that the president appeared “angry” without a “clear agenda.” Smith continued:

Clearly yesterday’s press conference, as you said, 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. Okay. I think we can all agree on that. He was angry. He was frustrated by what came out. There was not a prepared, clear agenda of, okay, here’s my explanation, here’s what I’m doing. And it didn’t go well, okay. There’s no doubt about that. That needs to get better. But again, the most important thing is is he on top of the economy? I mean, look look at how we have managed to. Everyone said we were going to be in a recession. We’re not now. There are still affordability crisis. We got to make housing affordable. We got to make food more affordable.

But he has negotiated a very difficult situation coming out of the pandemic, dealing with a series of international crises in a way that has been very coherent and has moved the policy forward. There’s no doubt in my mind right now that he’s capable of doing the job. Messaging. Very complicated if you’ve never run for office. All right. I like to think of myself as a reasonably articulate person. All right. And I’ve done this a long time. I’ve been in press conferences. I’ve been in town hall meetings where I wish, you good. I shouldn’t have said that. And then you try to fix it and then you make it worse. Okay? It is not as easy as it looks.

Watch the clip above via CNN.