Biden struggles to remember when son Beau died and Trump's election year in Robert Hur interview audio
WASHINGTON, DC: The audio of former President Joe Biden’s 2023 interview with special counsel Robert Hur, shared by Axios, reignited questions about his mental acuity as he struggled to remember when his son, Beau Biden, died, or when Donald Trump was elected president.
The audio includes long pauses, and at times, the sound of a clock striking is audible in the background. The transcripts of the interview were made public in 2024, but this is the first time audio excerpts from the sessions have been released.
Joe Biden struggles to remember when his son Beau died and Donald Trump's election year
During a point in the interview, Joe Biden tried to recall the death of his firstborn and said, "My son is either been deployed or is dying. And so... What was happening though? What’s much about dying? May 30, 2015, he died. May 2015. I think it’s 2015. I’m not sure the months are, but I think that was it."
Beau died from brain cancer on May 30, 2015, at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, aged 46, per Fox News.
Biden also mixed up the year of Trump’s first presidential victory in the audio.
"Trump gets elected in November of 2017. 2016. 2016. So... That’s when we left office, January of 2017. But that’s when Trump gets sworn in," he said.
Biden's fumbling recollections are part of two three-hour interviews conducted on October 8 and October 9, 2023, that Hur used to support his conclusion that the former president’s memory was "significantly limited," per the outlet.
In his report, Hur, who decided against prosecuting the 82-year-old for improper possession of classified documents, described Biden as a "well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory."
Laura Ingraham says we still don't know who was making the calls for Joe Biden
On the Friday, May 16 episode of Fox News' 'The Ingraham Angle', Laura Ingraham said, "This is the biggest scandal that I remember in recent political history: that this man was allowed to continue as the commander-in-chief of the world's greatest superpower."
"I'm not sure Joe Biden was capable of ordering dinner for himself, much less ordering airstrikes or anything else the commander in chief might have to do," panelist Francey Hakes added.
The host later said in the segment, "We still don’t really know who was making the tough calls. It obviously wasn’t the man we heard on that tape."
Meanwhile, Trump earlier told reporters that Attorney General Pam Bondi and her team would determine whether the audio should be released.
"I know people that are 89, 90, 92, 93-years-old that are literally perfect — but Joe was not one of them," @POTUS said today about Biden's mental decline.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 16, 2025
"Our country is at stake ... You can't have a man in that condition and everybody was holding back, including the press." pic.twitter.com/NpJJPIYYAE
He said before departing Abu Dhabi, "That’s up to Pam [Bondi] and the group. I haven’t really looked into it."
"Everybody understands his condition. I know people who are 89, 90, 92, 93 years old and are literally perfect. But Joe was not one of them, and they did a lot of hiding. They were really playing games. And, you know, you can’t do that. Our country’s at stake," the 78-year-old added.
