By Michael Katz | Wednesday, 27 May 2026 06:34 PM EDT
Former first lady Jill Biden said she was frightened that her husband was having a stroke during his disastrous presidential debate against Donald Trump in June 2024.
Former President Joe Biden, 81 at the time, looked listless and lost during the debate and struggled at times to deliver coherent responses. Entering the debate, he already faced persistent questions about his age and mental sharpness.
A month later, he withdrew from the race, becoming the first president to do so since Lyndon Johnson in 1968. He endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, as the Democratic nominee.
“I was frightened because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Jill Biden told “CBS News Sunday Morning” in an interview set to air Sunday.
“I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I thought, Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke. And it scared me to death.”
The CBS interview will air two days before the release of her memoir as first lady, “View From the East Wing.”
Jill Biden supported her husband immediately after the debate, joining him at an Atlanta Waffle House and praising him for a job well done.
“Joe – you did such a great job,” she said during an event with supporters, according to the New York Post. “You answered every question, you knew all the facts.”
Jill Biden was one of her husband’s staunchest defenders, publicly saying he would finish the job.
But behind the scenes, she pressured 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 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in September 2025.
The interview was part of the committee’s investigation into the former president’s alleged mental and physical decline and alleged efforts to conceal it from the American people, as well as into any unauthorized executive actions.
Jill Biden continued defending her husband against criticism about his mental sharpness. Still, the debate performance led to pressure from within the Democratic Party for Biden to exit the presidential race, which he did on July 21, 2024.
Her memoir, according to publisher Simon & Schuster, promises to bring readers “behind the scenes” of her life as first lady, including what it was like to witness “the abrupt end of her husband’s bid for re-election.”
