OPINION:
“Today, at the top of our meeting, Jill is going to give an update on the House initiative — White House initiative to fundamentally change the approach and fund — on how we approach and fund women’s health services,” President Biden said at a Cabinet meeting on Sept. 20.
We now know from Jake Tapper and Alex Thomson’s reporting that Mr. Biden’s White House staff highly scripted these Cabinet meetings to shield the public from Mr. Biden’s obvious cognitive decline. For these meetings, Mr. Biden relied on teleprompters and note cards and asked his Cabinet secretaries in advance for the questions they would ask so his team could prepare a response.
“So, I’d like to turn it over to Jill and — for any comments she has,” Mr. Biden said as he ceded the floor to his wife. She was sitting at the head of the table, while Mr. Biden sat at the center.
“Thanks, Joe,” Mrs. Biden responded before taking control of the meeting.
A month earlier, Mrs. Biden was the Vogue cover girl. In an exclusive interview to the glossy magazine, she argued how important it was that her 81-year-old husband be reelected to the presidency and discussed her increased presence on the campaign trail.
“[Jill] really believes in her husband’s ability to get things done for the American people — whether they’re his supporters or not. That’s why she’s fighting so hard for him to get a second term, because there are things they’ve got left on the agenda. And she’s told me she’ll travel twice as much, and fight twice as hard, because of the threats she sees — especially to women,” the article quoted Katie Rogers, the White House correspondent for The New York Times, as saying.
It was written before Mr. Biden’s disastrous debate with Donald Trump on June 27 and published before Mr. Biden released a letter announcing his withdrawal from the presidential candidacy on July 21.
The article was later amended with the following editor’s note: “The debate on June 27 spurred a discussion about whether President Joe Biden should remain the Democratic nominee. Dr. Jill Biden, the first lady and Vogue’s August cover subject, has fiercely defended her husband and stood by him. Reached by phone on June 30 at Camp David, where the Biden family had gathered for the weekend, she told Vogue that they ‘will not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president. We will continue to fight.’ President Biden, she added, ‘will always do what’s best for the country.’ Whatever happens in the weeks and months between now and November, it is Dr. Biden who will remain the president’s closest confidant and advocate.”
There is no question that Dr. Jill Biden knew of her husband’s condition — that he was in no physical or mental condition to be reelected to the most powerful office in the world — and actively tried to mislead the American public by saying he was.
The comforts of the White House, the glow of the TV cameras, the glamour of Vogue cover shoots, the power of running Cabinet meetings and setting the White House’s daily agenda: these were trappings she wasn’t prepared to let go of.
For a woman who insists that everyone call her “doctor” after she graduated with a doctorate in education, not medicine, none of this should be a surprise.
Yet no one was buying her act.
No matter how isolated she tried to keep her husband, his public gaffes — failing off his bike in Delaware and up the stairs to Air Force One, asking where a deceased congresswoman was in the crowd at the White House and wandering off in public photo-ops, to name a few — Mr. Biden’s age and whether he was fit to serve another term were top of mind to most voters.
In an August 2023 AP/NORC Poll, 77% of U.S. adults said Mr. Biden was too old to be an effective president for four more years: 89% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats.
It was reported that Mr. Biden made the decision to end his presidential race alone, while sick with COVID-19 in his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with Mrs. Biden by his side. It can’t be denied that at the time, there was mounting pressure from his party to step down.
On July 11, Nancy Pelosi appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and ducked a question on whether Mr. Biden should step down. She responded by saying, “It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” even though Mr. Biden had already declared he was running. A few hours later, Democratic fundraiser and actor George Clooney penned an op-ed in The New York Times questioning the president’s fitness and ability to win reelection.
In an exit interview with The Washington Post in January, Mrs. Biden expressed her disappointment in her “friends” — mainly Mrs. Pelosi — who pressured her husband to quit the race.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships,” she told The Post. “We were friends for 50 years. It was disappointing.”
The Post recalled a line in her 2019 memoir about her ability to hold grudges.
“Joe has an incredible capacity to forgive, and he’s incapable of holding a grudge,” Mrs. Biden wrote. “But that means I end up being the holder of grudges,” the one who recalls “every slight committed against the people I love.”
When asked whether Mr. Biden could have served another four years, she replied, “Sure. I mean, today, I think he has a full schedule. He started early with interviews and briefings, and it just keeps going.”
To this day, Mrs. Biden insists there was no cover-up of Mr. Biden’s decline and seems to think she should still be in the White House.
“The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day,” she said earlier this month in an appearance on ABC’s “The View.” “He’d get up, he put in a full day, and then at night, he would, I’d be in bed, you know, reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings, working with staff. I mean, it was nonstop.”
Her lies will continue to further her lifestyle as long as possible, for Mr. Biden is her cash cow, despite his recently announced advanced cancer diagnosis. Mr. Biden is penning a book and can be hired for a speaking gig starting at $300,000 a pop.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.