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Many have suspected that Dr. Jill Biden played a key role in saving the country by facilitating Donald Trump's long-awaited return to the White House. Many have assumed the former first lady (and acting president of the United States) was possessed of an insatiable lust for power, which drove her to insist that her enfeebled octogenarian husband, Joe Biden, run for reelection. The ill-advised decision nearly destroyed the Democratic Party when Biden's cognitive impairment became impossible to ignore. It forced the party to rally around Kamala Harris, the most incompetent presidential candidate since Hillary Clinton, all but ensuring that Trump would win a second term and usher in the Golden Age of America.
The revelations unearthed in several new books by political journalists—conveniently published after the election—confirm that these suspicions and assumptions were correct.
"[L]et’s be honest, Jill was a thousand percent behind this," a Biden ally told journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes, authors of Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House. "So, she was pushing it. The staff was all pushing it. At the end of the day, I don’t think anyone in that inner circle was presenting the president any contrary advice that this thing is not going to be easy or maybe this is not the best thing for the Democratic Party."
Allen and Parnes note that many of Joe Biden's longtime aides were also desperate to cling to power, and refused to consider advising the president to retire after a single term. "Nobody walks away from this," senior adviser Mike Donilon reportedly told a prominent Democrat. "No one walks away from the house, the plane, the helicopter." This burning desire to retain the perks of the White House, the authors explain, was "doubly true for the first lady." Dr. Jill had enjoyed them for nearly a decade, and "the trappings of the most elite levels of Washington power had grown on her." The reporting confirms what presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said about Jill Biden in February 2024: "She likes power. She wants to stay. She wants some sense of revenge."
Getty ImagesThe book describes the "core group of family and deeply loyal aides [who] acted as gatekeepers, schedulers, and protectors" of President Biden. Not surprisingly, Dr. Jill "carried the most sway." Her chief of staff, Anthony Bernal, helped "manage his calendar and his personal needs," which included almost daily sessions with a makeup artist to hide "the physical signs of his age." Allen and Parnes describe how Jill would occasionally attempt to intervene when Joe was behaving like a befuddled geezer in front of guests. For example, she tried (without success) to stop Joe from taking the family of Jackie Walorski—the dead congresswoman he had attempted (without success) to converse with days earlier—on a bizarre tour of the White House swimming pool lockers rooms.
Leading up to the now infamous debate in June 2024, Jill and other family pressured aides to cut short the president's prep sessions, which weren't going particularly well, out of concern for his health. Hours before Joe walked on stage and bragged about beating Medicare, the first lady exuded confidence during a meeting with Democratic donors at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta. "The president’s feeling great," she said. "He’s ready. We’re going to win this thing!" (He wasn't; they weren't.) Biden's performance at the debate horrified most Democrats, but Jill was determined to stay the course. "Jill Biden was, if anything, more firm than her husband about maintaining a residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," Allen and Parnes write. She and Hunter Biden, the president's crackhead son, blamed his advisers for pushing him too hard, and urged him to "keep fighting." The family then fled to Camp David for a photo shoot with Annie Leibovitz.
Getty ImagesBiden eventually caved to the overwhelming pressure from panicked Democrats, but didn't mean the party's chances of beating Trump had meaningfully improved, especially after Biden endorsed Harris out of spite for Barack Obama, who wanted an open primary. Chris Whipple, the author of Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, describes the party's predicament as follows: "Democrats had been saddled with the last-minute candidacy of an untested nominee. And for one reason: No one in Biden’s inner circle had leveled with the president about the folly of running at his advanced age and uncertain state. History will likely judge harshly the men and women who served him."
One of the ways Jill Biden's and the president's top aides tried to weather the calls for him to step down, according to Allen and Parnes, was by inflicting "serious reputation damage" on Harris in the weeks following the debate. "They sent electronic messages to people trashing the vice president, saying if you keep pushing on Joe Biden to get out, you’re going to end up with Kamala Harris, and that’s going to be a huge mistake," Allen told Vanity Fair. Jill didn't like the VP in part because she "had never gotten over" Harris's racially charged attack—during the 2020 primary campaign—on Biden's opposition to federal busing mandates designed to integrate public schools in the 1970s. Allen and Parnes describe her as "the keeper of the vindictive flame for the family." Even after the election, she remains "really bitter at Harris," according to a family friend.
Jill's "venom was even more potent" when it came to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), the most prominent Democratic who had publicly prodded Biden to step aside. In December, when Pelosi needed hip replacement after suffering a fall in Luxembourg, the first lady "wasn't interested" in sending her condolences, a slight that did not go unnoticed. Pelosi's daughter Alexandra lashed out the following month in an interview with Politico. "If I was Lady McBiden, I’d put on my big girl pants, play the long game, and think about my husband’s legacy," she said.
Alexandra Pelosi is right, obviously, but only if you care about the Democrats and support their longstanding efforts to ruin America. Most normal citizens can agree that Jill Biden should be honored for her efforts, however ill-intentioned, to burn the party down in a frantic attempt to stay in power. Rarely in the course of human events has one individual's reckless ambition and extreme pettiness had such a positive impact on her country's future. On behalf of a grateful nation: Thank you, Dr. Jill.
2024 Man of the Year: Jill Biden
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