Special counsel recommends no charges, but probes Biden’s political weakness

Happening this Friday: Donald Trump wins Nevada caucuses and captures all four delegates from Virgin Islands… President Biden blasts special counsel’s charge of Biden’s “poor memory”… Supreme Court signals it’s unlikely to let Colorado bar Trump from the 2024 ballot… And the final release from latest NBC News poll: More voters rate Trump’s presidency as “better than expected” in hindsight.

But FIRST… The good news for President Joe Biden is that the special counsel investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents declined to charge him with a crime. 

The other good news for the president is that the special counsel described how Biden’s case differs from Donald Trump’s — given Biden’s cooperation and voluntary interview. 

The bad news for Biden was everything else that happened on Thursday. 

Special counsel Robert Hur concluded Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen.” Potentially more damaging, Hur called the president an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

Then in the evening, Biden quickly called a news conference, where he lashed out at the special counsel for observing the president couldn’t recall when his son died (“How in the hell dare he raise that?”); defended his age and memory (“I know what the hell I’m doing”); blamed his staff for the classified documents at his residence (“I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing”); and then mistakenly referred to Egypt’s president as “the president of Mexico.”  

And then at the same news conference, the president appeared to shift the administration’s official line on the Israel-Hamas war, calling Israel’s military response in Gaza “over the top.” (Question: Did Biden intend to make that news at the press conference?)

In fairness to Biden, politicians at every age make verbal mistakes like the Egypt-Mexico one. And aides and progressive commentators cheered the anger that Biden displayed last night — to counter the age questions hovering over the president.  

But add it all up — the debate over Biden’s age and fitness, the blaming of staff, the Egypt-Mexico mistake, and the sheer disorganized White House response to a report it knew was coming — and it was a mess of a day for Team Biden. 

One final point to make: Even before yesterday, our NBC News poll found a whopping 76% of voters saying they’re concerned about Biden’s age and mental fitness. 

So that issue for Biden existed well before Thursday’s news.

Headline of the day The number of the day is … 14%

That’s the share of registered voters who say Biden has done a better job as president than they expected in NBC’s new national poll. Another 42% said his tenure in office is worse than their expectations, and 44% said it’s met expectations. 

Biden is underwater with independents (6% say his administration has gone better, 52% say it’s worse), and only 30% of Democrats say his administration is eclipsing expectations (52% say his tenure is meeting expectations). 

The poll also found that voters have a rosier view of Trump’s presidency with more distance. Forty percent of registered voters said his tenure was better than expected, 31% called it about as expected and 29% called it worse than expected. 

When NBC asked the same question in August of 2018, 29% said Trump’s administration was going better than they had expected, 27% said worse and 43% said as expected. 

Read more, and hear from respondents in their own words, on NBCNews.com. 

Eyes on November: Supreme Court weighs Trump ballot challenges

The Supreme Court met Thursday to hear arguments in the case challenging Trump’s position on the ballot in Colorado — after the state’s high court barred him from the ballot for his actions after the 2020 election and around the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.  

The justices weighed the provision of the 14th Amendment that prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from holding office, and appeared unlikely to side with the Colorado’s court’s decision. 

“Justices from across the ideological spectrum raised concerns about states reaching different conclusions on whether a candidate could run, and several indicated that only Congress could enforce the provision at issue,” write NBC’s Lawrence Hurley and Dareh Gregorian. 

Hurley also notes that the justices largely did not engage over the key question of whether Trump actually engaged in an insurrection, or if the Jan. 6 riot was an insurrection itself. 

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one to focus on the issue. She asked Trump’s attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, if Trump had engaged in an insurrection and pressed him on whether “a chaotic effort to overthrow the government is not an insurrection?”  

“This was a riot,” Mitchell said. “It was not an insurrection.” 

In other campaign news … 

Trump marches on: Trump won the Nevada and Virgin Islands Republican caucuses on Thursday night, netting an additional 30 delegates for the Republican National Convention.

Remaking the RNC: NBC’s Matt Dixon, Allan Smith and Katherine Doyle examine the complicated path ahead if Trump decides to influence changes to leadership at the Republican National Committee. Meanwhile, one potential contender, former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, dismissed the notion that he could be the next chairman, saying at Trump’s Nevada caucus party that McDaniel “does a really good job,” per NBC’s Vaughn Hillyard. 

“I’m going to win” Former Ambassador Nikki Haley defended her decision to stay in the GOP race during an interview with the Wall Street Journal, declaring she would win the GOP nomination and adding “I’m weakening Trump because of who Trump is.” 

About face: House Speaker Mike Johnson scuttled a planned endorsement of Montana Rep. Matt Rosendale in his bid for Senate, Politico reports, which would have pitted Johnson against Senate leadership and aligned him with a member of Congress who has had a complicated relationship with Trump.  

Worries about the border: At House Democrats’ annual policy retreat in Virginia, some congressional Democrats worried that border security could top abortion rights as the top issue facing voters this year. And Biden addressed members at the retreat, speaking publicly for the first time on the special counsel’s report about his storage of classified documents. 

New York, New York: A Newsday/Siena College poll released Thursday found a close race ahead of Tuesday’s special election in New York’s 3rd District to replace former Rep. George Santos, with former Democratic Rep. Tom Suozzi leading Republican Mazi Pilip by 4 percentage points. Suozzi and Pilip also met for their first and only debate Thursday night, and clashed on multiple issues including immigration, abortion and guns, per Politico. 

She’s not running: Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, R-Wash., the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced Thursday that she won’t seek another term in Congress.

Blocked: The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday barred robocalls that utilize artificial intelligence to generate voices, per the Associated Press. The decision comes after a robocall appearing to use an AI-generated voice of Biden attempted to mislead New Hampshire voters about the state’s primary last month.  

ICYMI: What ELSE is happening in the world 

The Senate on Thursday voted to advance a bill that would provide aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan.

In a new court filing, special counsel Jack Smith said that a potential government witness in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case has received online threats that are now under investigation.