Former first lady Jill Biden said in an interview clip released Wednesday that she thought her husband, former President Joe Biden, was “having a stroke” during his critical June 2024 debate, which catalyzed the chain of events that eventually led him to drop out of the presidential election.
“I don’t know what happened. I mean, when I, as I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death,” Jill Biden said in an interview with CBS News’ “Sunday Morning,” the full version of which is set to air Sunday.
“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” she said.
The 2024 debate led to rampant scrutiny of Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities. At the time, Jill Biden called her husband’s performance during the debate “great,” praising him for having “answered every question.”
The White House aggressively pushed back against rumors of cognitive decline.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after Biden decided to drop out of the race and subsequently endorsed her, called his decision to stay in the race for as long as he did “recklessness,” though she also said she did not believe it was “incapacity.”
“‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris wrote in her campaign memoir.
Biden stayed in the race for weeks after the debate, despite mounting pressure to drop out. He eventually stepped down as the nominee three weeks after the debate, with 107 days to go before the 2024 election.
Since he left office, Biden, 83, revealed last May that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which had metastasized to his bones. He underwent several weeks of treatment, according to his office, and completed a course of radiation treatment in October.
Biden, who has frequently defended himself against accusations about his mental acuity and memory, sued the Justice Department on Tuesday to block the release of recordings and transcripts of private conversations with the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir. The suit stemmed from a 2024 Freedom of Information Act request by the conservative Heritage Foundation, requesting materials used by former special counsel Robert Hur to compile a report about allegations that Biden mishandled classified materials. Hur declined to criminally charge Biden.
Hur described Biden in his report as suffering from memory lapses, which the White House denied at the time. Audio of Hur interviewing Biden, which came to light last year, confirmed the described lapses.
Despite concerns about Biden’s age and mental fitness, it was Donald Trump who made history in 2024 when he became the oldest person ever elected to the presidency.
Trump, who made a habit of knocking Biden’s mental abilities, dubbing him “Sleepy Joe,” has sparked health concerns of his own. Trump has had moments of apparent drowsiness and a noticeably bruised hand, and he revealed that he underwent advanced imaging in October.
Trump visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Tuesday for his third checkup in 13 months. He said everything went “perfectly” on social media — but the White House has yet to release results or information about the outcome of his exams.
