{"id":698695,"date":"2026-05-28T05:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T05:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698695\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T05:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T05:36:12","slug":"jill-biden-says-she-thought-joe-biden-was-having-a-stroke-during-2024-debate-jill-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/698695\/","title":{"rendered":"Jill Biden says she thought Joe Biden was having a stroke during 2024 debate | Jill Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jill Biden<\/a> said she had been \u201cfrightened\u201d as she watched Joe Biden<\/a>\u2019s faltering performance during his 2024 presidential debate, and thought her husband might have suffered a stroke.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was frightened, because I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,\u201d the former first lady said<\/a> in a 30-second clip of an interview with CBS, set to air on Sunday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I watched it, I thought: \u2018Oh, my God, he\u2019s having a stroke,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it scared me to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden\u2019s poor debate performance against Donald Trump<\/a> in June 2024 sparked widespread alarm among Democrats, prompting calls for his withdrawal from the race.<\/p>\n

Under immense pressure, Biden ended his re-election bid and endorsed his vice-president, Kamala Harris<\/a>, leaving her just 107 days to campaign before the November 2024 general election.<\/p>\n

Throughout the 90-minute showdown in Atlanta, a raspy Biden, then 81 years old, repeatedly stumbled over his words, took long pauses and mumbled inaudibly and occasionally incoherently.<\/p>\n

At one point, his rambling response prompted Trump to quip<\/a>: \u201cI really don\u2019t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don\u2019t think he knows what he said either.\u201d<\/p>\n

Biden memorably tried<\/a> to land a blow on Trump\u2019s policies on tax cuts and the national debt, but tangled the line and instead declared: \u201cWe finally beat Medicare.\u201d His team later clarified that he had meant to say his administration had \u201cbeat big pharma\u201d, but the misspeak crystalized longstanding concerns about the mental acuity and physical condition of the US\u2019s oldest president.<\/p>\n

Biden also veered away from a question on reproductive rights<\/a>, shifting instead to references about women killed by immigrants \u2013 a pivot into one of his weaker areas and a point frequently emphasized in Republican talking points.<\/p>\n

Jill Biden has remained a stalwart supporter of her husband throughout his decades-long political career. In a rally shortly after the June 2024 debate, Jill Biden praised<\/a> her husband\u2019s performance, saying: \u201cJoe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next week, the former first lady will release View from the East Wing, a memoir about her time in the White House. In it, she is expected to share her account of her husband\u2019s fraught re-election campaign as well as his monumental \u2013 and historic \u2013 decision to withdraw.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jill Biden said she had been \u201cfrightened\u201d as she watched Joe Biden\u2019s faltering performance during his 2024 presidential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698696,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-698695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698695\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}