By Former First Lady Jill Biden said Tuesday that physicians examined President Joe Biden immediately after his faltering June 2024 debate performance against Donald Trump, an appearance that sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party and ultimately helped force Biden from the presidential race.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” as she promoted her new White House memoir, Biden described the debate as an inexplicable episode that frightened her in real time. She had previously suggested during her book tour that she feared her husband may have suffered a stroke on stage.
Host Joe Scarborough pressed Biden on what she thought had happened in the moments after the debate and whether she urged her husband to seek medical attention.
“But publicly, of course, you said that he did well, you cheered him on that evening. What do you say to people who today wonder if you thought that then, that something, a medical episode had happened. Did you recommend that he go? Did you recommend that he go to a doctor?” Scarborough asked.
“I have a team of doctors around me as first lady. Joe had a team of doctors around him. So, when I saw that, and I was frightened, I was, you know, scared to death to see that, and, but the doctors were there,” Jill Biden responded. “And then we got off the stage, and you know, I went to get my stuff. He was checked out by the doctors. They said he’s fine. We went on to do three more events that night and Joe was like he always was, and so to me, as I look back, I mean that was so inexplicable. I just to this day it’s just inexplicable.”
The debate performance immediately altered the trajectory of the 2024 campaign, explained The Daily Caller. Biden appeared confused and struggled at several points to complete his thoughts, prompting prominent Democrats to question publicly whether the president could defeat Trump or serve another four years.
Biden withdrew from the race nearly a month later while isolating in Delaware after a COVID-19 diagnosis. He endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris shortly afterward.
Scarborough noted that many Democrats came away from the debate believing they had been misled about Biden’s condition. He asked whether the president’s aides — and perhaps members of the media — had insulated him from a demanding schedule that might have exposed his difficulties earlier.
“There were a lot of Democrats, even, who watched that debate performance, thought in some ways they’d been duped, that close advisers to President Biden, perhaps some members of the media, even had protected him enough and kept him out of maybe a rigorous event schedule enough that they could get him along through to election day,” Scarborough said. “Is there any truth to that?”
Jill Biden rejected the suggestion, arguing that the campaign would not have proposed the debate if aides had been attempting to conceal the president’s condition.
“Really, if we were hiding him behind the scenes, why did we ask the Trump team for the debate? I mean, we were the ones that proposed it, like, if we, if that were true, you know, why did we put him out there?” she said.
When Scarborough asked directly whether Biden had been protected, she replied: “No, I don’t think it was protected.” The former First Lady has been accused of running a “shadow government.”
The former first lady also discussed Biden’s aggressive cancer diagnosis, which was disclosed several months after he left office.
“Cancer is really tough, and so I’ve … so I would say he’s doing okay,” she said.
Jill Biden said her husband continues to travel by Amtrak and participate in speaking engagements, although he tires more easily.
She also addressed Biden’s recent reconciliation with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose relationship with the president deteriorated after the debate as Democratic leaders intensified pressure on him to leave the race.
“I just knew he went back to see Nancy, and then I found out later he said, you know, they said, ‘Peace, let’s be friends,’” Jill Biden recalled of an encounter at a recent funeral. “And we got in the car, and I said, ‘where did you go? And he told me the story, and I knew she was in the church, because I saw the guest list, of course, but I didn’t see her personally.”
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