In the aftermath of Special Counsel Robert Hur report that cleared President Joe Biden of wrongdoing yet questioned his mental wellbeing, Democrats rallied around the president and reaffirmed their commitment to seeing the 81-year-old through to a second term despite polls showing overwhelming concern about his age among voters.

“I'm someone who's worked intimately with the president. I worked with him on the bipartisan gun bill. He was involved in every step of that process, not only constructing the bill, but winning individual Republican votes. It would not have passed, if not for Joe Biden,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “There are literally thousands of people alive in this nation today because Joe Biden is incredibly competent, and he's incredibly effective.”

“He is also somebody that has been the only one member of our party who has effectively beaten Donald Trump in a general election. So I know that he is ready for this campaign,” Murphy added.

Hur wrote Biden did not reach the threshold of prosecution, in part because he believed it would be hard to convince a jury of criminality when Biden presented himself as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” In turn, Biden said "I’m well meaning, I’m an elderly man, and I know what the hell I’m doing” on Thursday.

But polling suggests Hur’s observations are broadly shared by the American public. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released Monday and conducted after Hur’s report found 86% of Americans think Biden is too old to be president for another four years. And a national poll by NBC News last week found 76% of respondents had either major or moderate concerns about Biden’s mental and physical health. 

Biden himself gave an impassioned defense of his memory and ability to continue to lead the night the report came out, albeit while confusing Mexico and Egypt. And those closest to him quickly and emphatically countered Hur’s assessment: Vice President Kamala Harris denounced the report as “gratuitous, inaccurate and inappropriate” on Friday and First Lady Jill Biden expressed deep concern about the special counsel’s references to the president’s oldest son’s death in an email to supporters. 

Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a close ally of Biden’s from his home state, said on Sunday “the idea that somehow, Joe Biden forgot the date of his son's death is offensive and appalling.”

“When I came back from the Middle East with a bipartisan group of 10 senators… I thought the president might have us over to the White House for 15-20 minutes,” Coons said on ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday. “And for two-and-a-half hours, he went around the table and asked for our insights and our input. And then he led a masterful conversation about the challenges to our security, the pathway to peace, the difficulties with Iran and with its proxies.”

Democrats across the party defended him from criticisms by Hur and Republicans. Any national Democrats with concerns largely kept them private or shared them with reporters on the condition of anonymity. 

"I've been with the President of the United States many times," Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said on Friday. "He is on the ball. The man knows more than most of us have forgotten."

“I've seen the president twice in the last two weeks. I've had a conversation with him. He’s completely mentally sharp when we were discussing the Middle East,” said California Rep. Ro Khanna on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, arguing “he is fully capable of making the argument” for Democrats in 2024.

And Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a progressive whose city is hosting the Democratic National Convention in August, said Biden “has provided this country with an incredible, gracious leadership at a very tumultuous time in our nation’s history” as he spent time with senior White House adviser Tom Perez on Friday.

Even Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netnayahu, whose planned ground invasion of Rafah in Gaza has put him at odds with the Biden administration, said on ABC News’ “This Week” that he found the president “very clear and very focused” in their dozen of phone calls since the Israel-Hamas war began on Oct. 7, 2023,  and during Biden’s visit to the country less than two weeks later. He said he had seen no sign of mental decline in his interactions with the president.

Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips is challenging Biden for the Democratic nomination in a campaign that was sparked by his concerns for Biden’s age and electability. He’s said he tried to convince Pritzker, Harris, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other prominent Democrats to run before he got in the race.

“I’ve long known that President Biden cannot, and must not, serve a second term. Furthermore, the data is consistently showing he’s almost certain to be defeated if he tries. Not just to any Republican, but to Donald J Trump,” Phillips wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Saturday. “And that was before the Special Counsel’s report, the confused moments, and misstatements of the past few days. I can only imagine how bad the data will look next week.”

Phillips lost to Biden’s write-in campaign in New Hampshire by over 40 percentage points, skipped the Nevada primary and finished in third with 1.7% of the vote in South Carolina, where Biden secured 96.2%.

“Is it an issue? Yes, it’s an issue, let the democratic process play out. And he’s winning,” Khanna said, noting Biden is beating Phillips “overwhelmingly.”

But head-to-head polls continue to show Biden losing to former President Trump, 77, and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, 52, in hypothetical general election matchups.

“What happened with Joe Biden this week and what we've seen with Donald Trump is another example of why we have to face the reality of the fact that when you get to those ages, you get diminished,” Haley said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “These are people making decisions on our national security. These are people making decisions on the future of our economy, we need to know they're at the top of their game.”

Biden’s campaign is frustrated questions about his age are outpacing the coverage in some outlets of Trump’s remark on Saturday that Russia should be able to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members.

“Donald Trump encouraged Russia’s ruthless dictator to attack our allies and fellow Western democracies Friday night – rightly sparking outrage across Europe and among those fighting for democracy around the world,” campaign spokesperson T.J. Ducklo said in a statement on Monday. “You may have missed it because marquee media outlets in America deemed it less newsworthy than gratuitous and sensationalist attacks on the President’s age.”

The campaign cited data that showed significantly more coverage of Biden’s age than Trump’s NATO remark on cable news, in the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal,

Biden’s campaign co-chair and former White House adviser Mitch Landrieu called questions about the president’s ability a “bucket of BS that’s so deep your boots will get stuck” on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday. In a separate appearance, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said “the most difficult part about a meeting with President Biden is preparing for it because he is sharp, intensely probing and detail-oriented and focused.”

And California Rep. Adam Schiff, the polling leader in the competitive race to replace the deceased Sen. Dianne Feinstein, called Hur’s report “hackery.”

Though angered by the report at first, Biden had begun cracking jokes about it by Monday.

“I know I don’t look like it,” Biden said at a conference of local officials in Washington on Monday. “But I’ve been around a while.”