Ben, do you consider it news that Joe Biden is old?

Yeah, I think so. Last week, when the Internet exploded over allegations that President Joe Biden was losing his memory.

I decided to get Slate's Ben Mathis Lily on the line.

I think it's a fair subject for discussion

when he is the president of the country

and wants to be president of the country until he's 85.

Ben has covered politics for a long time.

So it is not really news to him that Joe Biden is old.

In fact, last week, Ben was already planning to write

about Biden's increasingly public memory lapses. The way Biden tends to confuse one

leader for another seems to lose steam mid-thought.

And then, the news shifted.

Good evening and welcome everyone. No criminal charges, but at the same time little to celebrate for President Biden today

after a special counsel investigation found he willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after leaving the vice presidency.

The prosecutor who had been investigating the president for his handling of classified information

announced he would not be charging Joe Biden but that was not all.

But the report also raising serious questions about the president's recall, saying his memory was significantly limited in interviews with investigators.

This report said the president had trouble remembering the exact dates he served as vice president, even that he reached to recall when his own

son died. To quote the special counsel directly, he called Biden a sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man.

I mean that's kind of bizarre that you were writing about one memory slip and then all of a sudden

we're writing about another memory slip.

Well and then making things worse for him. and we're writing about another memory slip.

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