Former first lady Jill Biden has finally confessed to the extent of her husband Joe’s deteriorating health during his failed 2024 reelection campaign.
In a shocking sit-down with CBS News scheduled to air this Sunday, Jill Biden confessed she thought Joe was “having a stroke” during his disastrous 2024 debate with Donald Trump.
This comes on the heels of defending her husband from the immediate political fallout of the debate.
“I was frightened, because I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” she told CBS News ahead of the June 2 release of her memoir, “View from the East Wing.”
“I don’t know what happened,” Biden said.
“As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”
Take a listen —
NEW: Former First Lady Jill Biden says she thought her husband was having a stroke during his 2024 debate against Donald Trump.
Jill famously boasted on stage with Joe Biden after the debate about how he did "such a great job."
"I thought, 'Oh my God, he's having a stroke,' and… pic.twitter.com/wfYBoIpxWx
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 27, 2026
Jill Biden’s stunning confession comes after she frequently defended her husband’s debate performance and overall health.
“Joe – you did such a great job,” she said during an event with then-Joe Biden supporters in the days after the debate.
“You answered every question, you knew all the facts.”
However, while Jill Biden’s confession essentially already highlights what many know, one former Biden White House staffer told The New York Post that her admission is too little, too late.
“Unfortunately, when you wait this long to tell your own story in your own words, it’s extremely hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. She owed it to herself to be candid and transparent in the moment or the days after,” said Michael LaRosa, who served as Jill Biden’s communications director during her first year in the East Wing.
“The cake is already baked when it comes to shaping public perception about that time and about her,” he added.
“Penning books doesn’t cut it anymore.”
A source close to Jill Biden defended her latest comments and said she was simply telling her side of the story.
“She tried to dig deep and explore the answers to some of the questions she knows that are out there,” this source said.
A handful of other high-ranking Democrats who worked with Joe Biden said they were hardly surprised that Jill Biden’s positive public comments about her husband’s capabilities, both before and after the debate, were apparently untruthful.
According to reports, many long suspected that she operated with overinflated influence in the White House as her husband’s mental acuity waned.
One ex-aide quipped that another, more accurate title for the memoir could be: “View From the East Wing, Blindfold On.”
“Find it in the fiction aisle of your local bookstore,” this person added.
At the time of the debate, White House officials initially blamed a cold for Joe Biden’s poor performance, before pivoting to jet lag from an overseas trip taken two weeks earlier, before finally claiming that he had prepped so hard for the debate that he got facts jumbled in his head.
“Why did we push out he had a cold,” asked one Biden administration alum Wednesday night, “if she thought he had a stroke?”
Joe Biden’s health had been a focal point when he announced he would seek a second term in April 2023. At the time, he was 81 and the oldest person ever elected president.
According to reports, Jill Biden was pressuring aides to let the president rest more and took a major role in handling his schedule, former White House chief of staff Jeff Zients told a House committee investigating a potential cover-up of the president’s declining health.