The former first lady of the United States, Jill Biden, said, in a fragment of an interview broadcast on Wednesday, that she was “scared” during the 2024 presidential debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump and that she thought at that time that her husband had suffered a stroke (AVC), writes AFP.
On the stage of the CNN-hosted debate, the Democratic president, 81 years old at the time, appeared confused, stuttering and fumbling through answers on several topics in front of Republican Donald Trump.
“I was scared because I've never seen Joe like this, before or since,” Jill Biden said in this excerpt published by CBS News before the full interview on Sunday.
“I don't know what happened,” she added, then clarified: “The moment I was looking at it, I thought, 'Oh my God, he's having a stroke,' and that freaked me out.”
Joe Biden later withdrew from the presidential race weeks after the disastrous debate amid concerns about his health and cognitive abilities.
“I really had a really bad day during this debate because I was sick, but I don't have any serious health issues,” Biden said shortly afterward, noting that it was a bad cold.
But his wife supported his performance, saying at a campaign event hours after the debate with Trump: “Joe, you did an excellent job. You answered all the questions, you knew all the facts.”
After Joe Biden's withdrawal, Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential candidate, but failed to win over the Republican billionaire.
The American Democratic Party published a report on the causes of this defeat on Thursday, but the long-awaited document turned out to be incomplete and did not offer definitive conclusions, notes the French press agency.
Remarkably, the nearly 200-page “post-mortem” analysis of the election makes no mention of the issue of Joe Biden's age at the time of his re-election bid.
Since leaving the White House, Joe Biden – who is 83 today – was diagnosed in 2025 with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer with “bone metastases”.
