Jill Biden is leaving open the possibility that Joe Biden may have been drugged before his disastrous 2024 presidential debate against President Donald Trump, while revealing that doctors examined him that night amid her own fears that he may have suffered a stroke.
During a podcast interview Thursday, host Jamie Kern Lima directly asked Jill Biden whether doctors had ruled out a stroke following her husband’s alarming performance on the debate stage.
“Well, they did. They said, I mean, I didn’t say to them, when I was writing my book, I was reflecting, but I didn’t say, ‘God, did Joe have a stroke?’ I just said, ‘Is he OK? Is he OK?'” Biden responded.
When Lima pressed her on what she personally believes caused her husband’s performance that night, Biden said she still does not know, pointing to his extensive travel schedule, fatigue and the fact that she had spent little time with him in the period immediately preceding the debate.
“I mean, there’s all kinds of theories — you know, he had been traveling,” she said. “I know he was tired, he didn’t feel well that day, when I saw him, but there was nothing definitive that I could point to. And I had been on the road for two weeks up until that moment. So, I wasn’t with him. I didn’t see him days before, weeks before. I saw him maybe one hour before.”
Lima then raised a more startling possibility, asking whether someone could have secretly put something into Biden’s drink before he took the debate stage.
“There’s no way anyone could have, God forbid, laced his drink or something?”
“Who knows? Who knows?” Biden responded.
Joe Biden’s office did not immediately respond to a request from Fox News Digital seeking comment on the remarks.
The June 2024 debate against Trump became one of the defining events of the presidential campaign. Biden repeatedly stumbled over his words, appeared confused at times and experienced lengthy pauses, triggering an immediate political crisis as even some prominent Democratic supporters began publicly calling for him to abandon his reelection bid.
Jill Biden has revisited the episode in her memoir, “View from the East Wing,” writing that as she watched her husband onstage that night, she became frightened that he might be suffering a stroke.
“I wasn’t horrified. I was frightened,” Jill Biden recalled in a May interview.
She said Biden’s appearance and behavior were unlike anything she had previously witnessed from him and that her immediate reaction was concern that something medically serious was unfolding.
“I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since,” the first lady said. “I don’t know what happened. As I watched it, I said, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ It scared me to death.”
During Thursday’s podcast appearance, Jill Biden said doctors were routinely around the presidential couple and that she was assured her husband was medically fine that evening. Biden subsequently continued with additional scheduled events.
“It was like such an aberration,” she added.
Jill Biden’s decision to repeatedly revisit the tumultuous final months of the 2024 campaign during publicity appearances for her book has drawn criticism from some Democrats, who would prefer to move beyond an election that ultimately ended with Vice President Kamala Harris losing to Trump.
Andrew Bates, who served as a Biden spokesperson, publicly questioned the wisdom of reopening the controversy while Democrats are preparing for the midterm elections.
“I don’t see why that painful conversation for the party needed to be publicly reopened right now.”
Jill Biden responded sharply to Bates’ criticism, challenging him to address his objections directly to her.
“I want to say to Andrew: Call me up, and say it to my face, buddy.”
Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, told Fox News Digital that he does not expect Jill Biden’s memoir tour or the renewed discussion of the 2024 campaign to have a significant effect on voters in either the midterms or the 2028 presidential race. He said, however, that many Democrats view the Bidens’ recent public appearances as dwelling on a difficult chapter the party would rather leave behind.
“Democrats seem to feel like they’re focused on the past, they’re focused on Trump coming back to power,” Dallek said. “They’re focused on the perceived sense of failure of Biden and his unpopularity as he left office.
“I think that the memoir tour, the various appearances by — whether it’s Jill Biden or Hunter Biden — I think there’s still, you know, a lot of affection for Joe Biden, for the Bidens in the Democratic Party. There’s also, I think, a certain amount of pain associated with the memory of the Biden presidency and especially the last kind of year or two,” he told Fox News Digital in a statement.
Joe Biden is expected to offer his own account of his presidency in a book scheduled for release in November, following the midterm elections.
{Matzav.com}
