Jill Biden Reveals: "During the Debate With Trump, I Thought Joe Was Having a Stroke"

Former U.S. First Lady Jill Biden revealed in an interview with CBS that during the June 2024 presidential debate between her husband, then-President Joe Biden, and Donald Trump, she thought her husband was having a stroke live on air. "I was terrified, because I had never seen Joe like that before. Never," she said. "I don't know what happened. When I watched it, I thought to myself — my God, he's having a stroke. And it scared me to death."

The debate between Biden and Trump, held in Atlanta in June 2024 — about five months before the election — left an especially grim impression. Biden, then 81, appeared with a hoarse voice that his team attributed to illness, at times struggled to finish sentences, and in several moments seemed to completely lose his train of thought. The reaction among Democrats was immediate — party figures described "panic" within Democratic ranks, while diplomats from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia expressed public shock and concern.

Jill Biden's comments contradict what she said publicly right after the debate ended. At a rally in Atlanta just hours after the broadcast, she took the stage alongside her husband and praised him publicly: "Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts." Biden's campaign also insisted at the time that the president would not step aside and would run again against Trump.

But behind the scenes, the internal pressure kept building. Democratic leaders and donors called on Biden to withdraw. Even Vice President Kamala Harris, who avoided publicly criticizing the president, acknowledged that he had a "slow start" in the debate. In the weeks that followed, Biden's verbal slips at the NATO summit were added to the picture, along with his frail appearance after he came down with COVID. In the end, the 81-year-old president announced he was dropping out of the race and cleared the way for Harris.

Harris received the party's nomination only about three months before Election Day, leaving no real time for a proper primary process. In November 2024, she lost to Trump, who returned to the White House. After the defeat, Harris leveled sharp criticism at Biden and those close to him, and in her memoir she wrote: "'It's Joe and Jill's decision.' We all said it like a mantra, as if we were hypnotized. Was it noble, or was it irresponsible? Looking back, I think it was irresponsible."

Jill Biden, now 74, is widely seen as the person closest to her husband and as the central force behind his decision to run for another term and remain in the race for so long. After he withdrew, people on Biden's team acknowledged that they had noticed cognitive decline in the president even before the campaign began. After leaving the White House, Biden was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which had also spread to his bones.