{"id":2036,"date":"2026-05-29T06:04:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=2036"},"modified":"2026-05-29T06:04:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T06:04:14","slug":"in-new-memoir-jill-biden-wonders-whether-acknowledging-joes-poor-debate-would-have-been-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orlandorelocationreport.com\/?p=2036","title":{"rendered":"In new memoir, Jill Biden wonders whether acknowledging Joe\u2019s poor debate would have been better"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

By DARLENE SUPERVILLE<\/strong><\/p>\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 In her new memoir, former first lady\u00a0Jill Biden\u00a0reflects on former President\u00a0Joe Biden\u2019s poor debate performance\u00a0against\u00a0Donald Trump\u00a0nearly two years ago and wonders whether it would have been better to acknowledge it rather than reassure supporters afterward.<\/p>\n

Read more Conditions of 4 climbers who fell on Mount McKinley unknown as rescuers try to reach them<\/a><\/p>\n

The Democrat\u2019s performance ultimately proved to be his undoing as he campaigned for reelection, amplifying concerns about whether the then-81-year-old could serve a second term. He ultimately\u00a0dropped his bid\u00a0under pressure from within his party and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, who lost to the Republican Trump.<\/p>\n

In \u201cView from the East Wing,\u201d\u00a0a memoir about her White House years\u00a0that\u2019s being published next Tuesday, she said she still doesn\u2019t know why her husband performed so disastrously that day.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the book\u2019s 274-page manuscript, which includes her first public comments about the debate and the ensuing chain of events that sent Joe Biden back to private life in Delaware sooner than he had envisioned.<\/p>\n

The book also covers his\u00a0prostate cancer diagnosis\u00a0after leaving office and their son\u00a0Hunter\u2019s federal trial on gun charges, among other issues during Joe Biden\u2019s term, along with how she juggled the added responsibilities of being first lady and\u00a0her teaching career.<\/p>\n

Here are some highlights from the book:<\/p>\n

She thought Joe might be having a stroke while debating Trump<\/h4>\n

Jill Biden writes that her husband \u201clooked bleary\u201d in their hotel suite in Atlanta before the debate. She was confident he would do well, she said, because big events energized him. But when the CNN-sponsored event began, \u201cI immediately noticed that Joe didn\u2019t look good. He didn\u2019t seem himself from the opening.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

A few minutes in, he said something out of turn about how \u201cwe finally beat Medicare.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIs he short-circuiting? I thought,\u201d she wrote. \u201cIs this a stroke? It felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew, and the hologram was glitching.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wondered if he had been drugged or was experiencing a medical emergency.<\/p>\n

He improved as the debate went on, \u201cbut not enough to reassure me or anyone watching that he was okay. He clearly wasn\u2019t,\u201d Jill Biden said. \u201cI\u2019d never seen that look on his face before in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

As they walked offstage afterward, he used colorful language to whisper to her that he had messed up, which she took as a \u201csign of his having returned to himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cto this day, I still don\u2019t know what happened,\u201d she wrote. They attended a post-debate rally and dropped in at a Waffle House before traveling to North Carolina for a next-day appearance.<\/p>\n

The official explanation at the time from the White House and others close to the president was that he was suffering from a cold. But Jill Biden said she wonders if they should have acknowledged what millions of people saw \u2014 \u201cthat he looked very unwell in that debate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest lesson for us, I think, was that if you don\u2019t explain something well enough then the question won\u2019t go away,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThere was never a satisfying enough explanation offered for Joe\u2019s debate performance, and a lot of people never got over it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s performance in the debate crystallized the concerns of many voters that he was too old to continue serving as president. It sparked a fresh round of calls for him to consider stepping aside as the party\u2019s nominee as fellow Democrats feared a Trump return to the White House if Biden remained as their candidate.<\/p>\n

The drumbeat of calls for him to leave the race started before the debate had ended and, \u201cin the days to come, it would grow louder and louder,\u201d Jill Biden wrote.<\/p>\n

Fired from teaching at Northern Virginia Community College<\/h4>\n

Jill Biden reveals that while she was first lady, she was terminated by the school where she had taught English and writing since 2009. She had signed her annual contract in July 2023, and a termination letter signed by the college president was hand-delivered that winter.<\/p>\n

The grant used to pay her salary had dried up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt sick,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI was hosting holiday parties at the White House, so I had to go from seeing emails about my firing to groups of children belting out \u2019Jingle Bells.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Daily Horoscope for May 29, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n

Ultimately, the issue was resolved \u2014 she did not say how \u2014- \u201cand I kept my position.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she\u00a0taught her last class at the school\u00a0in December 2024, wrapping up a 40-year career as an educator. She wrote in the book that she\u2019s exploring an opportunity to teach GED classes at an undisclosed women\u2019s prison.<\/p>\n

Jill Biden is \u2018pained\u2019 by the East Wing\u2019s destruction<\/h4>\n

People in Washington sent her photos of\u00a0the demolition\u00a0and she said, \u201cI could barely look.\u201d<\/p>\n

The East Wing was the\u00a0historic base of operations for first ladies\u00a0and their staffs, the social office, the military office and other operations. Trump had it torn down last year to build a ballroom.<\/p>\n

\u201cA major landmark and historic treasure was being treated like an extreme fixer-upper on HGTV\u2019s \u2018Property Brothers,\u2019\u201d she wrote, adding that what \u201cpained me\u201d was \u201cthe symbolic bulldozing of history and the eradication of institutional memory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anger over her husband\u2019s prostate cancer diagnosis<\/h4>\n

She noticed that Biden started waking up repeatedly in the middle of the night in the year before they left the White House. She alerted his doctors and urged him to see a urologist.<\/p>\n

About four months after leaving office, in May 2025, he was diagnosed with stage IV prostate cancer that had spread to his bones. Biden underwent daily radiation treatment for five and a half weeks and takes hormone pills that can cause him to become fatigued and moody.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we couldn\u2019t dwell in the grief because we were put immediately on the defensive, accused of having hidden his illness,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

The White House has a doctor\u2019s office and presidents have access to the best medical care.<\/p>\n

\u201cJoe couldn\u2019t stub his toe without 10 people wanting to run at him waving bales of gauze,\u201d she wrote. \u201cYou put the president in bubble wrap, and he ends up with stage IV prostate cancer? It made no sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

She disagreed with her husband\u2019s initial refusal to pardon son Hunter<\/h4>\n

Shortly before that fateful debate, Hunter Biden had been convicted of all three felony charges related\u00a0to the purchase of a revolver in 2018 when, prosecutors argued, he lied on a mandatory gun-purchase form by saying he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs.<\/p>\n

The family was surprised the case went to trial and viewed it as politically motivated.<\/p>\n

While Joe Biden had vowed that he wouldn\u2019t pardon his son if he were convicted, the former first lady saw things differently.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, it felt like in working so hard to be impartial, we guaranteed that Hunter would meet the worst possible legal fate,\u201d she wrote. \u201cJoe might have gone too far, in my opinion, to show that his family was being treated with complete impartiality.\u201d<\/p>\n

But during his final weeks in office, Biden issued\u00a0pardons for Hunter, sparing him a possible prison sentence, and for\u00a0Biden\u2019s siblings and their spouses, fearing they might become targets of the incoming Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Read more Florida deputy said driver was texting with a hand that she doesn\u2019t have<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her new memoir, Jill Biden reflects on Joe Biden’s poor 2024 presidential debate performance against Donald Trump. 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