{"id":23325,"date":"2026-05-27T21:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T21:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/joe-bidens-disastrous-debate-with-trump-frightened-jill-biden\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T21:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T21:02:13","slug":"joe-bidens-disastrous-debate-with-trump-frightened-jill-biden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/joe-bidens-disastrous-debate-with-trump-frightened-jill-biden\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Biden\u2019s disastrous debate with Trump \u2018frightened\u2019 Jill Biden"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Former first lady Jill Biden said then-President Joe Biden\u2019s catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump in 2024 \u201cfrightened\u201d her because she thought he might be experiencing a medical episode.<\/p>\n

Jill Biden said in a CBS News \u201cSunday Morning\u201d interview<\/a>, a clip of which was released on Wednesday, that the former president \u201cscared me to death\u201d in his June 2024 debate against Trump, which prompted Democrats to begin pressuring Joe Biden to drop out of the race weeks before he ultimately suspended his campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was frightened,\u201d Jill Biden said of watching her husband debate Trump. \u201cBecause I had never, ever seen Joe like that before or since.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know what happened,\u201d she continued. \u201cAs I watched it, I thought \u2018Oh my God, he\u2019s having a stroke.\u2019 And it scared me to death.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe Biden\u2019s bumbling, unintelligible answers and sickly appearance in the debate reignited concerns about his age and capacity to carry out the responsibilities of the presidency. The moment triggered an avalanche of calls<\/a> for the president to drop out of the race despite reassurances from Biden allies in the White House and the campaign, including Jill Biden.<\/p>\n

In a post-debate campaign event, Jill Biden told supporters at the time<\/a> that her husband \u201cdid such a great job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Joe Biden ended his presidential campaign<\/a> less than a month after his debate with Trump.<\/p>\n

Since Trump\u2019s victory, several former Biden allies, administration officials and campaign staff have criticized how Biden\u2019s age was handled by top officials in the White House and the campaign.<\/p>\n

Among those critics was former Vice President Kamala Harris, who wrote in her book<\/a> that Jill Biden pressured her husband Doug Emhoff to continue backing Biden after the debate in a manner that angered Emhoff. Harris also wrote that she harbored concerns about Biden\u2019s ability to beat Trump.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former first lady Jill Biden said then-President Joe Biden\u2019s catastrophic debate performance against Donald Trump in 2024 \u201cfrightened\u201d her because she thought he might be experiencing a medical episode. Jill Biden said in a CBS News \u201cSunday Morning\u201d interview, a clip of which was released on Wednesday, that the former president \u201cscared me to death\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}