Former special counsel Robert Hur’s hearing before the House Judiciary Committee–where Republicans gave him a positive performance review while Democrats underlined his conclusion that Joe Biden didn’t do any wrong while Donald Trump did–brought out the debunked GOP talking point that Biden is a doddering old man with a bad memory, a description helped along by Hur’s editorializing.

But that characterization doesn’t make sense when you look at the transcripts of Hur’s interview with the President, who sat for sessions with the Special Counsel in the days after the Hamas attack on Israel.  In the transcript of the five-hour interview done over two days, Biden responded “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall” a total of 51 times in the 251 pages.  About ten of those “memory lapses” were when Biden was asked to identify specific people who may have moved boxes that contained documents in the previous four decades, or when asked the last time he may have been in proximity to the documents prior to their discovery.

But is that a lot?  Are Biden’s memory gaps–on average, once every five pages of transcript–excessive?  Here’s where we can look at similar evidence to see how well Biden worked.  Because federal interview transcripts are fairly well standardized–25 lines per page in the same font size–we can see how well others performed in similar circumstances.

Former official Trump spokesliar and current Fox “News” shill Kayleigh McEneny gave an interview of similar length with Jack Smith’s office regarding her activities during the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress and other activities to undermine the Constitution.  In her 322-page, McEneny had 59 “I don’t remembers” and 116 “I don’t recalls” significantly higher than Biden’s count, and for a far more memorable event that was in the recent past.

For their special counsel depositions, the Trump kids didn’t do much better.  Ivanka had 21 “don’t remembers” and an amazing 144 “don’t recalls” over 300 pages of Smith interview.   Junior came in at 28 and 26, respectively, but in a much shorter 105-page transcript.  Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani’s stats:  245 pages, 39 and 33.

In a 340-page deposition for the recently-decided New York civil case, Trump Organization President Eric Trump had a modest 48 “don’t remembers” and 16 “don’t recalls” but he also threw in a few dozen “I don’t knows” that we normally wouldn’t count, but he said them as he tried to deny connection to documents from the Trump Organization saying things like “I don’t know if I had much true involvement in that building” or “I don’t know how to answer this in the abstract.”

But as far as Big Don is concerned, he rarely admits he doesn’t know anything outright; he doesn’t really do the Peter Gabriel set of answers.  Much of his equivocation is in the form of, “I think [this], but I can’t be sure” or “I’ve been told…”  There is one benchmark we can use:  in his deposition for the New York civil suit, Trump didn’t say “I don’t remember” or “I don’t recall” once as he was questioned.  He did, however, invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination more than 450 times.