Former US first lady Jill Biden says she thought her husband, President Joe Biden, would have a stroke during the 2024 presidential debate, which failed miserably, BBC writes
“I was scared, because I had never seen Joe like this, before or since. Never,” Jill Biden told CBS News, the BBC's US partner.
“I don't know what happened,” she said. “As I was looking at it, I thought, 'Oh my God, he's having a stroke'. And it scared me to death.”
President Biden faced intense pressure from fellow Democrats to resign as the candidate after a poor performance in the debate against then-Republican nominee Donald Trump. Ultimately, Biden withdrew from the race and endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Joe Biden rolled out of bed the day after the 2024 election convinced he had been wronged.
The elites, Democratic officials, the press, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama – they shouldn't have kicked him out of the race. If he had stayed, he would have defeated Donald Trump. That's what the polls suggested, he said over and over.
His polling teams told us there are no such polls.
There was no credible data, they said, to support the idea that it had won. All the unreported information suggested it would have been a defeat, probably a spectacular one, far worse than the one suffered by his replacement as the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The discrepancy between Biden's optimism and the unfortunate reality of the poll results has been a constant throughout his administration. Many inside him felt that his inner circle shielded him from bad news.
It's also true that in order for Biden to absorb the results of those polls, he would have had to confront the biggest problem that drove them: The public had concluded — long before most Democratic officials, the media and other “elites” did — that he was far too old to do his job. In reality, before that momentous presidential debate on June 27, 2024, many insiders—people with far better insight into Biden's condition than the general public—saw things that shocked them. Most said nothing,” write Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson – two very respected American journalists – in the book “Original Sin”. The two spoke to about two hundred people, including lawmakers and White House and campaign insiders.
Jill Biden has been by her husband's side throughout his decades-long career, from his time as a senator in Delaware to his years as president.
She was considered one of his most influential advisers during his presidency and among those who eventually encouraged him to withdraw from the 2024 race.
Following the June 2024 debate, months before the presidential election, Democrats expressed dismay at the president's shaky performance during the debate.
During the debate in which both men were running for a second term, Biden and Trump clashed over major issues, including immigration, the economy and abortion rights.
But Biden's “slow start” (as his own Vice President Kamala Harris called it) has some Democratic leaders worried.
Biden had a hoarse voice, which his team said was due to illness, and there was a moment when he appeared to lose his train of thought.
Voter concerns about Biden's health, mental acuity and age — 81 at the time — weighed heavily in the debate.
Analysts have criticized the president in detail in most major US media outlets, expressing concerns about Biden's ability to carry out his duties as president, as well as his chances in the November 2024 election.
It was considered unlikely that Biden, the current president, would be replaced as the Democratic Party nominee just months before the election. The difficult process of choosing another candidate was seen as having the potential to derail the party's bid for the White House.
But his performance in the debate – along with gaffes during a NATO summit in the coming weeks and frail behavior after a Covid diagnosis – ultimately led to the end of his candidacy.
Harris took the Democratic nomination about three months before the election and ultimately lost the bid to Trump.
In the aftermath of the election loss, Harris criticized her former boss, calling Biden's decision to run for a second term “reckless.”
“'It's Joe and Jill's decision.'We all said it like a mantra, like we were hypnotized,” Harris wrote in his memoir. “Was it grace or imprudence? In hindsight, I think it was imprudence.”
