UK (Parliament Politic Magazine) – Sunak’s spokesman dismisses concerns over Biden’s memory, emphasizing UK-US relations amidst geopolitical tensions and leadership transitions
Rishi Sunak’s official spokesman pressed the PM has no worries about US President Joe Biden’s mental agility after a report challenged the 81-year-old’s memory. “Rishi Sunak has no concerns about Joe Biden’s mental dexterity.”
The US President has come under fire after information suggested the leader of the free world has “significantly limited” remembering. It follows a sequence of high-profile errors, including remarks that saw him confuse Egypt and Mexico last week.
If Mr. Sunak worried about Mr. Biden’s mental agility, the PM’s official spokesman responded simply: “No.” Concerns about the 81-year-old US President’s memory were presented in a report by special counsel Robert Hur into Mr Biden’s handling of classified documents, which exonerated him of wrongdoing.
Mr. Hur expressed that Mr. Biden had come across as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” in interviews. Mr. Biden returned last week, saying his memory is “fine.”
Mr. Sunak has had several meetings with the US President since taking over as PM. Last June, the US President welcomed him for a visit to the White House. As they posed in the Oval Office, Mr. Biden started the conversation by accidentally referring to the PM as “Mr. President.”
Rectifying himself, he told Mr. Sunak: “Mr President? I’m just encouraging you, Mr Prime Minister. It’s great to have you back. In the past few months, we have encountered each other in San Diego and met in Belfast and Hiroshima.
“And now we’re here. We will solve all the world’s problems in 20 minutes.” The PM expressed the UK is dedicated to standing with allies against Russia after Donald Trump said he would “encourage” Putin to attack nations that don’t pay their bills. Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden look set to be the two candidates going head-to-head in the US election later this year.
In another worrying indication of things to come, Mr. Trump told a rally on Saturday that he wouldn’t protect NATO allies who were behind on their payments. He declared he would say to a leader under threat from Moscow: “No, I would not protect you I would encourage them to do whatever they want.”
Quizzed about Mr. Trump’s remark, the PM’s spokesman said: ” So I’m not going to get into specific commentary on things said during political rallies, but clearly from the UK perspective, we are fully committed to standing with our allies to combat Russian aggression and make it clear Russia that it will not succeed in intimidating Europe. We will do whatever is needed as part of NATO to protect our national security.”
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But he stated he was confident US-UK relations would be strong whoever wins the election. He said: “Of course, we’ve always said that we’ll always look at the US, and we work with the US through some different administrations and will continue to do so in the future.”