The 2024 U.S. presidential election, one of the most turbulent in modern American political history, has yielded new behind-the-scenes revelations from former first lady Jill Biden, who opened up about her panic during Joe Biden’s disastrous first debate against Republican nominee Donald Trump. In a forthcoming interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, set to air this weekend, Jill Biden shared for the first time her immediate visceral reaction to her husband’s faltering performance that upended the entire election cycle.
“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” she told CBS correspondent Rita Braver, as confirmed by the BBC, CBS’s partner for U.S. political coverage. “I don’t know what happened,” she added. “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”
That June 2024 debate, held just five months before the November general election, was supposed to be a critical moment for incumbent President Joe Biden to make his case for a second term against his predecessor Trump. The two candidates clashed on defining national issues, from immigration policy and post-pandemic economic recovery to abortion rights, but any policy arguments Biden made were quickly overshadowed by his shaky on-stage demeanor. Then-Vice President Kamala Harris later described the performance as a “slow start”; Biden spoke with a raspy, strained voice (his team attributed this to a lingering illness) and at one point lost his train of thought mid-answer, leaving viewers and party leaders stunned.
Long before the debate, voters had already raised widespread concerns about Biden’s age and mental acuity — he was 81 years old at the time, the oldest person ever to serve as sitting president — and that poor performance amplified those anxieties exponentially. Within hours, Democratic Party leaders began privately and publicly pressuring Biden to drop out of the race, warning that his candidacy would put not just the presidency but down-ballot congressional and gubernatorial seats at risk. Major U.S. media analysts echoed those concerns, arguing that Biden’s standing against Trump had deteriorated to a point that threatened the party’s chances of holding the White House.
At first, Biden’s campaign pushed back hard against calls for him to exit, insisting the president would remain the Democratic nominee and would participate in a second scheduled debate against Trump. Political analysts also widely noted that replacing an incumbent nominee just months before a general election would require a chaotic, divisive process that could split the party and derail its campaign entirely. But a series of subsequent missteps, including awkward gaffes at a NATO summit in the weeks after the debate and a visibly frail appearance following a COVID-19 diagnosis, convinced Biden that he could not continue. He ultimately announced he would end his re-election bid and endorsed Harris, his vice president, to take his place as the party’s nominee.
Jill Biden, who has been a constant presence alongside her husband through his 50-plus-year political career — from his early days as a U.S. Senator from Delaware to his four years in the White House — was widely recognized as one of Joe Biden’s most trusted and influential advisers during his presidency, and multiple reports have confirmed she was among those who encouraged him to step away from the 2024 race.
Three months before the general election, Harris officially secured the Democratic nomination, but she ultimately failed to overcome the late start and lost the general election to Trump. In the aftermath of her defeat, Harris offered a scathing rebuke of Biden’s decision to run for a second term in her memoir, calling the choice an act of recklessness. “‘It’s Joe and Jill’s decision.’ We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized,” Harris wrote. “Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness.”
Jill Biden’s new comments offer the most intimate look yet at the moment that changed the trajectory of the 2024 election, laying bare the fear that gripped even Biden’s closest inner circle in the aftermath of the debate.