Former US First Lady Jill Biden has weighed in on her husband’s disastrous performance at the first 2024 presidential debate, a moment that ultimately marked the beginning of the end for his re-election campaign.
In an interview preview published online on Wednesday, the television programme CBS Sunday Morning pressed the former first lady for her response to that moment.
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“ Were you horrified as you saw it unfold?” host Rita Braver asked Jill Biden.
“ I wasn’t horrified,” she responded. “I was frightened, because I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never.”
Braver then asked Jill Biden what she thought happened on June 27, 2024, when her husband, then-incumbent Joe Biden, took the debate stage opposite his Republican rival Donald Trump.
“I don’t know what happened,” Jill Biden said. “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke’, and it scared me to death.”
A turning point for Biden
Both Joe and Jill Biden have largely stayed out of the spotlight since the 2024 election, which saw Trump be re-elected for a second, if nonconsecutive, term as president.
Critics have largely pointed to the debate performance as tanking Joe Biden’s campaign for a second term and fuelling rumours about his declining health.
The incumbent Democrat was 81 years old at the time. The following year, he was diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer.
Though Biden had debated Trump twice before, during the 2020 presidential election, his 2024 appearance was widely panned.
On stage, Biden appeared to walk stiffly and struggled to maintain his train of thought. At one point, he trailed off, only to suddenly announce, “We finally beat Medicare.”
The televised debate prompted conversations over the advanced age of both candidates, and whether Biden was fit to continue leading. Members of Biden’s own party called on him to suspend his re-election campaign, which he ultimately did on July 21, 2024, less than four months before the vote.
His vice president at the time, Kamala Harris, won the Democratic nomination, but her brief campaign ended in a loss to Trump.
Since then, Trump has sought to portray Biden as not in control of his own administration. In part, that has served as a rationale for Trump’s efforts to undo his predecessor’s executive actions.
Trump has, for instance, claimed that executive orders and clemency decisions Biden issued were invalid because the Democrat or his staff used an autopen, a signature-producing device Trump himself has employed while in office.
Trump also ordered the Justice Department to investigate whether government officials attempted to conceal any health conditions Biden might have had while in office, including by using the autopen.
The New York Times reported in March that the Justice Department ultimately lacked evidence to bring a case against Biden and his aides.
And Biden himself has waved aside any accusations that he was in cognitive decline while in office.
“Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency,” Biden said in a statement last year. “I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
Biden sues Justice Department
Trump and his Republican allies have continued to probe the matter of Biden’s health and his mental acuity as president.
Their efforts have been fuelled by a special counsel report issued by Robert Hur, who was tasked with conducting an independent investigation into Biden’s handling of classified documents.
Hur declined to file charges, but he explained that his decision was motivated, in part, by Biden’s advanced age.
The report described Biden’s memory as “significantly limited”, and Hur doubted whether a jury would believe that Biden retained any classified documents “willfully”.
“At the time of any trial or sentencing, Mr. Biden would be well into his eighties, an age when relatively few people are prosecuted,” Hur wrote, adding: “On balance, his record of service also supports a decision to forgo criminal charges.”
To come to some of his conclusions, Hur cited audio recordings and transcripts of Biden and the ghostwriter on his memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose.
The records came largely from 2016 and 2017, before Biden was elected president in 2020. He was out of office at the time.
But Trump’s allies have sought to release the records to the public, framing them as proof that Biden was unfit for public service well before his 2021 inauguration.
The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, is among the groups petitioning for their publication.
On Tuesday, Biden sued the Justice Department to bar the release of the files, citing his right to privacy. The lawsuit explains that Biden told his ghostwriter, Mark Zwonitzer, sensitive details of his personal life, including the death of his son, Beau.
“When the U.S. Department of Justice obtains that private information through a criminal investigation, the Department bears a particular responsibility to protect it from disclosure,” the lawsuit says.
Trump responded to Biden’s lawsuit this week by calling the Democrat a “crooked politician” in a social media post.
The Republican leader has also faced questions about his mental health. Should he serve a full term, Trump will be 82 years old at the conclusion of his presidency, a few months older than Biden was when he left office.
