‘He was slowing down’: Jill Biden opens up about Joe’s decline, the debate scare, and Hunter pardon

Jill Biden is acknowledging what many Americans suspected — but not in the way his critics would frame it.

In a new memoir promotional interview with CBS News, the former first lady said her husband was “slowing down” and “getting older” before he abandoned his 2024 reelection bid, but stopped short of conceding cognitive decline.

“He was the same, the essence of the same Joe Biden. But yeah, he was slowing down. He was getting older,” Mrs. Biden told CBS News correspondent Rita Braver.

She called the deterioration “natural aging” in “a very intense job” that “ages you, quickly.”

The candid admission stands in sharp contrast to her public posture during the campaign’s lowest moment — the June 2024 presidential debate. Privately, Mrs. Biden said she feared her husband was having a stroke as she watched him stumble, mumble and lose his train of thought on live television.

“I thought, ’Oh my God, he’s having a stroke,’” she said. “And it scared me to death.”

Moments after the debate ended, though, she told him: “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts.”

On the pardon of son Hunter Biden — convicted on felony gun and tax charges — Mrs. Biden was direct: “We could not let our son go to jail on a charge that no one has ever gone to jail for.”

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

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