Mitt Romney defends Biden from 'politically charged' special counsel report

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has had a bad week, but he’s now got a former Republican presidential candidate in his corner.

Special counsel Robert K. Hur may have cleared Biden of allegations of wilful wrongdoing in his mishandling of classified documents, but he also created quite the political stir for dubbing the president “an elderly man with a poor memory.”

Many Republican politicians and pundits alike have seized on that one clause in Hur’s 345-page report to lambast Biden, but the GOP’s own 2012 presidential nominee tells Raw Story it was a low and petty political jab.

“I thought the report from the prosecutor was politically charged. Unnecessarily,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) told Raw Story on the steps of the Capitol as he was headed to the Senate floor to cast a rare Friday evening vote.

When it comes to mental hiccups, Romney can relate.

At 76, Romney may be a year younger than the GOP’s presumptive 2024 nominee, former President Donald Trump, 77, but, like Trump and Biden, according to Merriam-Webster, he’s a senior citizen.

While Romney can relate to their mental lapses, he can’t understand what he sees as a double, anti-Biden standard.

“We do that sometimes. As you get older you say the wrong word,” Romney said. “As when Donald Trump said several times, ‘Nikki Haley’ instead of ‘Nancy Pelosi.’ That's no big deal, but Biden does something, it becomes a headline.”

Per his new usual, Romney — who’s retiring at the end of his Senate term — remains an outlier in today’s Republican Party, though other senatorial seniors can relate, especially the Senate’s only nonagenarian who refused to judge America’s current octogenarian president.

“Somebody that's 90-years-old should not comment on somebody that's 80-years-old,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) — who turns 91 this fall — told Raw Story.

“No comment on his age?” Raw Story inquired. “Doesn’t it strike you as personally offensive?”

“I think that I should reserve judgment on that, because I haven't had a conversation with him for three years,” Grassley — who served next to Biden for decades in the Senate — said.

Biden may have been thrown under the proverbial bus by the special prosecutor, but he’s getting lots of support from his former Democratic Senate colleagues, especially septuagenarians from his home state of Delaware.

“One of the reasons why I think Donald Trump's not crazy about debating is because his mental faculties would probably make Joe Biden — and the rest of us — look like a genius,” 77-year-old Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) told Raw Story. “I think that's part of the reason why he won't debate. Maybe someday they'll have a chance to debate and we'll get to judge for ourselves.”

Romney too dismisses what he calls two different standards for Trump and Biden.

“I thought it's interesting that it gets a lot more play,” Romney told Raw Story of the attention Biden’s mental slips get compared to Trump’s gaffes.

Still, Romney knows the debate is only going to heat up from now through November's election.

“But it's a real issue,” Romney said. “And it's not gonna go away.”