The night of June 27, 2024 is marked in red in recent American history. The beginning of the end. Then a presidential debate on CNN, in Atlanta, between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, not only caused panic in the Democratic Party, it forced a change of candidate (candidate, in this case, Kamala Harris) and ended, in the end, in a replacement in the White House. Today we know that, behind the scenes, the then president’s own family lived a true medical nightmare in real time. More human, very painful.
Almost two years after the world held its breath at the fragility of an 81-year-old Joe Biden with a hoarse voice and a lost gaze, his wife, Jill Biden, has confessed the terrifying suspicion that crossed her mind while watching him on television. “I wasn’t horrified, I was scared, because I had never seen Joe like that. Not before or after. I have never seen him like that since,” the former first lady revealed in a preview of an interview with the program Sunday Morning from the American network CBS, whose full broadcast is scheduled for this Sunday, June 1.
The statement is devastating and describes the absolute panic of a wife who, beyond politics, feared for her husband’s life: “I don’t know what happened. As I watched him, I thought, ‘My God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”
These words radically contrast with the damage control and image of unity that the Biden family tried to project immediately after that debate, in the heat. The political communication manuals were activated at maximum power to cover up a disaster that tens of millions of people saw live.
Minutes after the cameras on the CNN set went off, Jill Biden herself took the stage at a post-debate event in Atlanta to cheer her husband on in front of the militants with a phrase that is already part of the history of campaigns: “Joe, you did a great job. You answered all the questions. You knew all the facts.”
Behind, the reality was different. Advisors insisted for weeks that it had been an “anomaly,” a bad night caused by a common cold and exhaustion from international travel.
Joe Biden himself tried to weather the storm days later in North Carolina by admitting the obvious: “I am no longer a young man. I don’t walk as easily as before, I don’t speak as fluently as before, I don’t debate as well as before.” But Jill’s fear was not misplaced regarding the political diagnosis: the debate was, indeed, a lethal blow.
Internal pressure and Democratic panic ended up overthrowing his candidacy just four weeks later, making way for Kamala Harris.
Turn page
The former first lady’s confession does not come at any time. Jill Biden is in the midst of a promotional campaign for her new memoir, titled Trax (scheduled for publication on June 2), in which this teacher who continued to practice even while in the White House reviews her years in the eye of the political storm.
In the interview, she defends the tremendous capacity for work that her husband maintained throughout his presidency, trying to drive away the ghosts of persistent cognitive decline. “He would wake up, work all day and, at night, when I was already in bed reading my book, he would continue on the phone, reading reports, working with the team,” she recalls to justify that the debate was a specific collapse, inexplicable even for her.
Almost two years later, the wound of the 2024 campaign is reopened with brutal honesty. Jill Biden has confirmed what half the world suspected that night in front of the television: that what was collapsing live was not just a candidacy, but the health of the most powerful man in the world.
