Overview
- Jill Biden published View from the East Wing this week and in multiple TV interviews said she feared her husband was having a stroke during the June 27, 2024, debate and that he had been “slowing down” toward the end of his presidency.
- She told interviewers White House doctors checked Joe Biden after the debate and pronounced him “fine,” and she also said she never saw signs of cognitive decline while he was in office.
- Top Democrats and influential operatives criticized the timing and usefulness of revisiting the episode, calling the memoir's disclosures “unhelpful” for party unity as Republicans have quickly seized on the remarks for political attacks.
- Jill Biden said she would not have advised her husband to seek a second term if she could go back, and she described the personal toll of the 2024 campaign on the family.
- The disclosures add to debate over medical transparency for presidents after the DNC's postelection autopsy did not address health decisions and after Joe Biden's office disclosed an aggressive prostate cancer diagnosis that later spread to his bones.