CNN Analysts Praise Biden Pissed-Off Presser As ‘Smart Thing To Do’ — Made Him Seem ‘More Youthful, More Human’

CNN analysts Errol Lewis and John Avlon praised President Joe Biden’s pissed-off presser over Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report as a “smart thing to do” and a chance to seem “more youthful, more engaged, and more human” despite a well-publicized misspeak.

Just over a year after AG Garland announced the appointment of Hur to investigate the issue of classified documents discovered by Biden aides in private storage spaces and immediately turned over to the FBI, Hur’s report dropped Thursday.

The good news is there will be no charges against Biden — but the bad news is the report is chock full of damaging asides about the president that Biden responded to Thursday night in a fiery press scrum — which was undercut by his misspeaking “Mexico” when he meant to say “Egypt.”

On Friday morning’s edition of CNN This Morning, Louis argued the presser was good for Biden, and Avlon concurred it was “smart” despite the gaffe that many have seized on:

PHIL MATTINGLY: What you heard from the president at the end of that piece was real. That was not a manufactured fury. My understanding, according to people who are in the room at the behind closed doors of the House Democratic Caucus a few hours prior, he had been more profane in saying the same exact thing. He was mad. Did he help himself or hurt himself at the press conference last night?

ERROL LOUIS: It’ll vary from viewer to viewer. I thought it was a it was good for him to show who he is. This is not handlers. This was not pollsters. This was Joe Biden, you know, sort of letting everybody know kind of where he’s coming from and how he feels.

I think that makes him seem more youthful, more engaged, more human, more relatable. There are pollsters who will tell you differently. It’ll play differently, you know, when you get it looped into a campaign ad.

But I think it can only help to have him do what I think a lot of us all know, which is that, yes, this is somebody we haven’t seen before, a president who’s up in age. And that means there are going to be verbal flubs. There are going to be questions that are raised.

How he responds needs to be how he wants to respond, not what pollsters think, not what some ad down the road is going to try and portray, but sort of who he is and what he’s doing. And I think authenticity wins out over a lot of different problems in this case.

JOHN AVLON: I think there’s a lot to that. I think in politics and in life, the best defense is a good offense. And you got get ahead of the story. You don’t just let the narrative be.

You know, that’s going to create some unforced errors. He is a man of a certain age. And time moves in one direction. and so that’s something he’s going to have to deal with.

But to assuage fears, you’re not going to, you can’t hide him. You need to he needs to talk to the American people directly and take questions. And so I think that’s the right thing to do. And ultimately the smart thing to do.

Watch above via CNN This Morning.

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