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Scott Stump
Jill Biden has opened up about backing former President Joe Biden’s presidential reelection bid in 2024 despite a disastrous debate performance in which she thought he might have had a medical emergency.
The former first lady spoke with Craig Melvin on TODAY June 1 about her new book, “View From the West Wing: A Memoir,” where she writes about supporting her husband’s candidacy after a debate performance against Donald Trump in June 2024 that ultimately led to him dropping out of the race.
Craig asked her if she would have encouraged him to run for reelection if she had the ability to go back in time.
“As I look back, would I want to put Joe through the hurt and the pain that we felt during that time? Never,” she said. “It was so hurtful. It had to be his decision. It had to be his decision alone because he had to live with that decision the rest of his life.”
Jill Biden said at an event right after the debate that her husband’s performance was “great” and said he “answered every question.” However, Biden’s showing in the debate raised questions about his cognitive ability.
“My mind is racing. What do I say to him? What do I say to him?” Jill Biden said on TODAY about the immediate aftermath of the debate. “I’m his wife. I’ve got to lift him up.
“I’m not going to get out there on the stage and say, ‘Joe, you really screwed that up,’” she added. “And we have all our supporters there. That’s who we are. I had to support him. I couldn’t come out and really publicly say, ‘Joe, you did a terrible job in that debate.’”
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic presidential nominee after Biden dropped out, wrote in her memoir that she did not believe he exited the race due to mental “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 2025 book, “107 Days.” The title of her book came from the fact that Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid 107 days before the 2024 presidential election.
“That is her point of view, and if she felt that way, she should’ve said it,” Jill Biden said on TODAY about Harris.
The former president has repeatedly defended himself against accusations of cognitive and memory issues. He sued the Justice Department on May 26 to block the release of recordings and transcripts of private conversations with the ghostwriter of his 2017 memoir.
In a report about allegations that Joe Biden, 83, mishandled classified materials, former special counsel Robert Hur wrote that the former president had memory issues, which was denied by the White House. Audio of Hur interviewing Joe Biden, which came to light in 2025, confirmed the described lapses.
Jill Biden wrote in her new book that the debate was an aberration in her husband’s cognitive ability. However, Hur called Biden “an elderly man with a poor memory” in his report, while actor and prominent Democratic fundraiser George Clooney called for Biden to drop out of the race in a New York Times op-ed, citing his performance at a fundraising event.
“He aged,” Jill Biden said on TODAY. “He did. He got older. We all saw him aging. There were the words that he would forget, but we were all aging.”
She wrote in her book that she questioned whether she could be impartial enough to know whether her husband had grown too old to handle a second presidential term.
“The doctors did assured us he was healthy,” she told Craig. “And I saw him doing the job every single day. Every single day, he got up, he went into the office, he did the job, he passed bipartisan legislation. I saw him work hours into the night. Yes, did I see him slowing down a little bit when he got tired. Did he stutter a little bit at night? Yeah, sure, but he was still doing the job, and he was doing a good job.”
She said Joe Biden was encouraged all along by the Democratic Party to run for a second term.
“Then the debate happened, and things changed,” she said.
Jill Biden also addressed the criticism by some Democratic leaders and pundits that her new book is reopening old wounds.
“Democrats have a great future,” she said. “I think we’re looking forward to winning the midterms. And I think things are going to move forward in a more positive way. And yes, we look back and we’re going to learn from the mistakes we made.”
Ssince the dropping out of the race, Joe Biden was diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer in May 2025, and he underwent five weeks of radiation treatment after also enduring skin cancer surgery in September 2025.
Jill Biden shared an update on his health on TODAY.
“He’s doing OK,” she said. “I think if he had just been diagnosed with prostate cancer, that’s one thing because that can be cured, but the fact that it metastasized to his bones, that makes it a whole different story. And so I think Joe will live with cancer till the rest of his life.”
Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here!) that brings the day’s news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and uplifting stories right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else.
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