Jill Biden: Joe Biden ‘was slowing down’ during presidency

Former first lady Jill Biden said former President Joseph R. Biden was showing signs of “getting older” before dropping his bid for a second presidential term.

But Mrs. Biden, who has given several interviews to promote her new memoir, “View from the East Wing,” also insisted that she did not see any indications her husband was suffering from cognitive decline, or, as others have reported, that he wasn’t acting like his usual self.

“I don’t think that’s true,” Mrs. Biden said in the interview with CBS News correspondent Rita Braver released Sunday. “He was the same, the essence of the same Joe Biden. But yeah, he was slowing down. He was getting older.”

Mrs. Biden described her husband’s status as “natural aging,” in “a very intense job,” that “ages you, quickly.”

Mr. Biden, now 83, dropped out of the presidential race on July 21, 2024, weeks after a disastrous performance in a debate against President Trump in which he repeatedly lost his train of thought, mumbled words and uttered bizarre statements such as “we finally beat Medicare.”

Mrs. Biden said in an excerpt of the CBS interview released earlier that she feared he was having a stroke.

“I was frightened because I had never seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Mrs. Biden said in an interview with “CBS News Sunday Morning” that was released on Wednesday.

“I don’t know what happened,” Mrs. Biden continued. “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

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At the time, though, Mrs. Biden acted very differently, leading a post-debate event with her husband and praising his performance.

“Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts,” she said then.

Mrs. Biden said in the interview released Sunday that the former president “is doing well,” undergoing treatment for advanced prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

She said she wasn’t sure why the cancer was diagnosed so late, despite the high-level medical care Mr. Biden received in the White House.

The White House medical team never administered a blood test for prostate cancer.

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“Well, you know the doctors said that, according to the American Urological Association, that men over 70 don’t need a PSA, a blood test, any more because it’s a slow-growing cancer. … I do feel we had amazing care in the White House, but somehow that was missed,” Mrs. Biden said.

Mrs. Biden said, despite the questions about Mr. Biden’s cognitive decline while in office, she still believes “there’s nothing to” the questions about his mental fitness while in office.

She said she fully supported Mr. Biden’s decision to reverse an earlier pledge that he would not pardon his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted of felony gun charges, three felony tax-fraud offenses and six misdemeanor tax-fraud charges.  

Mr. Biden issued the pardon after Mr. Trump’s win and about six weeks before he left office.

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Mrs. Biden said she backed the pardon because “the Justice Department changed. And I think the process was not fair to Hunter.”

When Mr. Trump was elected, she said, “things changed, and we knew that he would target Hunter and we could not let our son go to jail on a charge that no one would go — I mean no one has ever gone to jail for.”

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Susan Ferrechio

sferrechio@washingtontimes.com

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