evidence: Forget about Kendrick Lamar and Sabrina Carpenter — the hottest track of the summer is the secret (thus far) tape of Justice Department special counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Joe Biden. Everyone, it seems, is clamoring to hear it: major media outlets, essentially every Republican official on the planet, and plenty of moderates and other interested political observers. Democrats who continue to call on Biden to drop out of the race (with increasing intensity over the past few days) could gather vital support for their cause from the tape’s release. I’m dying to hear the elusive recording myself. [...] Naturally, Hur’s October 2023 interview of Biden became an object of obsession among Republicans bent on showing that Biden has lost a step, or five. The recent frenzy around Biden’s mental acuity, sparked by his debate debacle, has exacerbated demand for the Justice Department to disclose the tape. If he does sound like an "elderly man with a poor memory," audio of the interview would become accelerant on an already-raging political fire. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson offered no pretext about his motivation: "We all know why they don’t want to turn over the audio: because it will … show exactly what we all saw on the debate stage a couple weeks ago. That is something they want to cover up."