“I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never.”

Jill Biden thought Joe Biden was ‘having a stroke’ during disastrous 2024 debate with Donald Trump

"I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never."

By Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman

Ryan Coleman is a news writer for with previous work in MUBI Notebook, Slant, and the LA Review of Books.

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May 27, 2026 8:53 p.m. ET

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Joe Biden at the 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta. Credit:

Kyle Mazza/Anadolu via Getty

- Jill Biden is opening up about her concerns watching husband Joe Biden's infamous 2024 presidential debate performance.

- "I don't know what happened. I mean, when I, as I watched it, I thought, 'Oh, my God, he's having a stroke,'" Jill recently reflected.

- The former president attracted widespread attention for his erratic, slurred, and often incoherent delivery during the bout against current president Donald Trump.

Jill Biden may have defended her husband Joe Biden's performance during an infamous 2024 presidential debate in the aftermath. But privately, she was terrified.

"I don't know what happened. I mean, as I watched it, I thought, 'Oh, my God, he's having a stroke.' And it scared me to death," the former first lady shared in an advance clip from a forthcoming interview with *CBS Sunday Morning*.

"I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never," she reflected.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump faced off in the first presidential debate of the 2024 race on June 27. Many already held concerns about Biden's perceived cognitive ability based not only on his age (81 at the time), but because of prior speeches and public appearances in which he spoke in a rambling, incoherent way.

There were concerns about Trump's cognitive fitness at age 77 as well, but Biden's performance at the Techwood Turner Campus in Atlanta stunned even those who were rooting hard for the incumbent candidate.

He appeared to lose focus in the middle of answering questions, he committed uncomfortable gaffes, as when he said we need to "finally beat MediCare" during an answer about healthcare, and he accused Trump of "molesting a woman in public" during one heated exchange.

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The backlash to Biden's debate performance was swift and overwhelmingly critical. The bipartisan panel of *The View *joined together to issue an urgent call for him to resign from the race the morning after. "Donald Trump was a mess. He lied his way through it, but Joe Biden's performance was so bad that it eclipsed everything that Donald Trump said," noted Republican cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin, while the more liberal Sunny Hostin conceded that "Biden lost the debate" and wondered aloud if "maybe he needs to go."

They got their wish when Biden stepped down a month later, making way for his vice president, Kamala Harris, to launch her own bid for the presidency.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden at the 2024 presidential debate in Atlanta.

ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Gett

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At the time, Jill Biden praised her husband's performance as "great," championing him for having "answered every question" put to him.

But two years into Trump's second term as president, after Harris lost the 2024 election, has caused many in the Biden inner circle to come forward with their closely held doubts.

Campaign biographer Chris Whipple alleged in his 2025 autopsy of the Biden term-two campaign that its managers and critical functionaries operated in a "fog of delusion and denial" regarding his cognitive capabilities. Whipple claimed that the Biden camp was "uncomfortable even then with the prospect of the president having an interview in real time with a reporter" in their justification of keep him at arm's length. "So there's no doubt that they were protecting the president, they were minimizing his contact with others."

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