For those of us who are parents there is no more dreadful prospect than that of outliving one of our children.

No parent should ever have to bury a child. Yet many do.

I can’t imagine the pain and heartache.

President Joe Biden has twice buried his offspring. Decades ago, when his first wife and young daughter died in a car crash and again in 2015 when his son Beau died of brain cancer.

He has a right to grieve in his own way for his children.

Yet Biden himself has cheapened Beau’s death by relentlessly invoking his late son in the most awkward and inappropriate situations - usually to elicit sympathy for himself - or to show some sort of sympatico with parents whose sons and daughters have died in combat.

He’s gone so far on several occasions to imply to other mourning parents that he knows how they feel since his son died in Iraq.

Biden has always been a serial exaggerator and braggart. That’s been part of his history. From his lies about his academic record, to his plagiarism and now to rage and prevarication about his mental condition.

What jumped out at me immediately when Biden gave that disastrous press conference to assure America that he wasn’t suffering from dementia was his indignant reaction to the special counsel report that noted the president couldn’t remember when his son died.

“There’s even a reference that I don’t remember when my son died,” he said. “How in the hell dare he raise that. Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself it wasn’t any of their damn business.”

I don’t believe that Robert Hur was the one who brought up Beau’s death during their October interviews. This wasn’t some sort of “gotcha question” for the president. Anyone who’s watched this craven political animal at work knows that it was Biden himself who invoked Beau’s death, hoping it would tug on Hur’s heartstrings.

Biden is simply embarrassed that his inability to recall when his son died made it into the report. 

Yesterday, John McCormick, editor of The Dispatch, said sources close to the investigation confirm that it was Biden, not Hur, who first mentioned Beau.

These are unnamed sources, of course. Perhaps that’s not true.

There is only one way to clear this up: The White House should release the transcripts and recordings of the five-hour interview and let us decide if the president is mischaracterizing the interview. It would also prove that he’s firing on all cylinders.

If the White House stonewalls, we have our answers.