Former First Lady Jill Biden has admitted that she thought her husband was having a stroke the night he imploded on the presidential debate stage against Donald Trump.
Two years after Joe Biden’s shocking performance paved the way for his political demise, his wife has admitted that she was “frightened” by what she saw that night, “because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never.”
“I don’t know what happened,” she told CBS News Sunday Morning’s Rita Braver in an interview airing this weekend.
“As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”
Joe Biden was running for a second term against Trump when his first presidential debate rapidly descended into a nightmare for Democrats.
His incoherent performance in July 2024 sent shockwaves through the Democratic Party and forced him to drop out of the race and endorse Kamala Harris a month later.
However, after a 107-day campaign, Trump not only won the popular vote against Harris but also won all seven battleground states and unified control of Congress.
The 90-minute debate was the first time Trump and Biden men had shared a stage in four years, with the then 81-year-old incumbent desperate to persuade a deeply skeptical nation that he had the mental fitness to stay in the Oval Office.
But about 12 minutes in, Biden, who looked sluggish from the moment he took the stage, appeared to lose his train of thought, partway through an answer about the economy.
At the time, Jill Biden insisted her husband was fine, fueling claims of a White House cover-up.
“Joe, you did such a great job, you answered every question, you knew all the facts,” she told him during a campaign event the next day as supporters cheered.
“And let me ask the crowd: what did Trump do?”
“Lie!” they chanted in unison.
Trump supporters have now accused the Bidens of lying to Americans.
“That on one hand comes off as a shocking revelation, that she thought she was having a stroke, but it also comes off to me as a complete and utter lie,” said Fox News presenter Will Cain, from The Will Cain Show.
Biden’s cognitive decline became a critical issue during the 2024 campaign, with Trump and Republicans pointing to every stumble and gaffe as evidence that the president was no longer fit to serve.
Trump now finds himself the subject of similar speculation about his health, with frequent bruises on his hands, swollen ankles and increasingly erratic behavior.
The president turns 80 on June 14 and is the oldest American president to be inaugurated.
On Tuesday, he visited Walter Reed Medical Center for the third time in just over a year, but the results have yet to be released.
Despite this, Trump insisted the examination went “perfectly” and that he is in excellent health.
“Just finished my 6 month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY. Thank you to the great Doctors and Staff! Heading back to the White House. President DJT,” he wrote on Tuesday as he returned to the White House.
He also doubled down on Wednesday, bragging on Truth Social that he had “aced” three cognitive tests—while taking a swipe at Biden and Barack Obama for never publicly taking one themselves.
The post came ahead of a Cabinet meeting where Trump appeared sluggish, kept his bruised hands hidden under the table for most of the time, and mixed up dates and names during a nine-minute rant about the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
