‘I thought Joe was having a stroke’ — Jill Biden on 2024 debate

The former first lady insisted Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance was an isolated incident.

By World Israel News Staff

Former first lady Jill Biden spoke publicly about her husband’s disastrous June 2024 debate against Donald Trump, insisting that the incident was an anomaly and not reflective of former President Joe Biden’s mental condition.

“I was frightened because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Jill Biden told CBS News in a promotional interview ahead of the release of her autobiography.

She said she was so surprised by her husband’s apparent mental impairment during the debate that she feared he was suffering a medical emergency.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said. “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

During the debate, Biden frequently struggled to answer questions, trailed off mid-sentence, and at times delivered incoherent responses.

Trump largely refrained from aggressively interrupting Biden throughout the debate. However, at one point Trump responded to one of Biden’s answers by saying, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.”

Biden’s shaky performance is widely viewed as a turning point in the 2024 presidential race and is often credited with influencing his abrupt decision not to seek reelection. The move left then-Vice President Kamala Harris to launch a frenzied national campaign roughly 100 days before Election Day.

At the time of the debate, Biden was 81 years old, and concerns about his mental sharpness had already circulated for months following a series of awkward public appearances in which he appeared confused, stumbled physically, or rambled during remarks.

Jill Biden’s account differs from multiple media reports published around the time of the debate that claimed several aides and Democratic insiders had privately expressed serious concerns about the president’s cognitive decline long before the nationally televised event.