The morning after Joe Biden's disastrous debate performance, I wrote something uncomfortable.
I wrote that no one should ever look at Jill Biden the same way again.
Not because of politics. Not because she supported her husband. But because what Americans witnessed that night felt like exposure - a frail and failing human laid painfully bare before a national audience…all while the person who knew him best stood beside him and let it happen.
At the time, I wrote:
No one knows Joe Biden better than Jill. No one can testify to his struggles like Jill can. Regardless of how many Joe Biden dementia moments we think we've seen on video, Jill has seen more. She knew what was going to happen to him on national television last night and she let it happen.
Those observations struck some people as unfair. Cruel and partisan even.
But now? Watch this clip from a new Good Morning interview:
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Unbelievable. Jill Biden now admits that she wondered whether her husband had suffered some form of medical episode on stage - even fearing, at least briefly, that he may have experienced a stroke.
The moral implications of that admission are difficult to overstate given the eye-popping scene she created after the debate hand ended. We all remember it:
Joe Biden shuffling off stage, visibly diminished and disoriented after ninety excruciating minutes. Then Jill Biden stepping beside him, smiling brightly, praising him warmly, speaking slowly and encouragingly before cameras while the campaign pressed ahead.
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The sarcasm is thick in the replies:
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At the time, many experienced the moment as uncomfortable.
In hindsight, it feels gross.
This wasn't care or "handling." It was power-obsessed performance.
Notice that Jill Biden claims, to the literal shock of reporter Rita Braver...
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...that she never saw such cognitive issues in her husband "before or since" the 2024 debate.
This, despite the fact that DOJ investigator Robert Hur concluded Biden should not be prosecuted for mishandling classified docs due to his declining cognitive state. This, despite the constant freezing and falling and staring emptily on stage.
Hundreds of videos documented Biden's condition before we ever heard the reports from White House staffers of the efforts they went through to hide it from the public.
Jill Biden projects an image of love for her husband. But while love protects dignity and fiercely guards the reputation of its object, power does something completely different. It whispers:
Just one more speech.
One more rally.
One more interview.
One more election.
If Jill Biden genuinely feared her husband was suffering serious cognitive or neurological decline, then continuing to parade him before cameras while insisting that concerns were exaggerated ceases to look like devotion and begins to resemble exploitation.
That's a great irony in this situation. Joe Biden's public life has long been shadowed by accusations that he was transactional, ambitious, and often willing to use relationships in pursuit of power. American politics is full of such stories.
The sad possibility hovering over this whose fiasco is that the man who spent decades manipulating power may himself have become its final casualty.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
