During a Thursday appearance on The View, former President Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden denounced the recent crop of books alleging a “cover-up” of the former president’s declining mental acuity.
In his first live interview with an American outlet since leaving the White House, the former president sought to defend his legacy and dignity as President Donald Trump and his allies have been unrelenting in their criticism of him.
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“They are wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that, No. 1,” Biden said about the new books referencing Democratic sourcing on his decline. “No. 2, you know, think of what we’re left with. We were left with a circumstance where we had an insurrection … not since the Civil War.”
CNN anchor Jake Tapper and Axios correspondent Alex Thompson’s book Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, says Biden and his allies “let their self-interest and fear of another Trump term justify trying to put an at times addled old man in the Oval Office for four more years.”
NBC News’s Jonathan Allen and the Hill‘s Amie Parnes’s book Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House also includes reporting about Biden’s decline and his reticence for former Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him as the Democratic nominee.
The former first lady said the anonymous sources disparaging her husband overlooked his commitment to the presidency. She also denounced reports about her alleged control over him.
“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. I mean, he’d get up, he put in a full day,” she said. “And then at night … 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.”
“I was with Joe day and night. I saw him more than any other person. I woke up with him. I went to bed at night with him. So I saw him all throughout the day, and I did not create a cocoon around him,” she continued. “I mean, you saw him in the Oval Office. You saw him making speeches. He wasn’t hiding somewhere. I didn’t have him, you know, sequestered in some place.”
She said the allegations that she was her husband’s Lady Macbeth were “hurtful.”
“It was very hurtful, especially from some of our so-called friends,” she said.
The interview came a week after Harris gave her first big speech since Trump took office. She warned of a constitutional crisis and that Trump’s tariff policy is creating the “greatest man-made economic crisis in modern presidential history.”
However, Democrats aren’t all welcoming the return of the Bidens to the scene.
“Absolutely delusional narcissist. Please just go away forever,” Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett said in response to Biden still contending that he could have beaten Trump.
Biden’s tenure as the Democratic nominee came to an abrupt end in July 2024 after his disastrous debate performance against Trump hastened calls from party leaders to step down.
Biden conceded he “had a bad, bad night” after the debate.
“Look, I think that the only reason I got out of the race was because I didn’t want to have a divided Democratic Party,” Biden recalled about his decision to exit the race. “I thought it was better to put the country ahead of my interest, my personal interest. I’m not being facetious. I’m being deadly earnest about that.”
Biden tapped Chris Meagher, his former deputy press secretary, to help defend his reputation amid the release of multiple books exposing the cover-up of his declining mental acuity.
According to Politico, Meagher’s hiring also came as the Trump administration prepares to release the audio of Biden’s interviews with special counsel Robert Hur.
Trump has repeatedly blamed Biden’s tenure for problems with the economy and the southern border.
The former president’s appearance on The View was overshadowed by Trump’s announcement of the first trade framework negotiated after a 90-day pause of his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Biden’s comments coincided with reporters gathering in the Oval Office to hear Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s phone call about the deal keeping the 10% baseline tariff on the United Kingdom.
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Yet the former president did not miss a chance to slam Trump.
“He’s had the worst 100 days any president ever had,” Biden said about his successor.
Biden called Trump “vacant” when asked about Trump’s attacks against him using an autopen to sign presidential pardons.
After Joy Behar, an anti-Trump critic and co-host on The View, asked Biden why Trump has repeatedly blamed him, Biden responded, “I beat him.”
Biden also said he could have defeated Trump in the 2024 election if he hadn’t dropped out.
“Yeah, he still got 7 million fewer votes. A lot of people didn’t show up,” Biden said.
However, Biden also conceded that he bears responsibility for Trump’s win.
“I was in charge, and he won. So, you know, I take responsibility,” he said.
While addressing the 2024 race, Biden also said he was not “surprised” that Harris lost to Trump.
“I wasn’t surprised, not because I didn’t think the vice president is the most qualified person to be president. She is,” he said.
He then said sexism was at the root of Harris’s loss.
“Really, I’ve never seen quite a successful and a consistent campaign undercutting the notion that a woman couldn’t lead the country and a woman of mixed race,” Biden said. “I think we underestimate the phenomenal negative impact COVID had and the pandemic had on people, on attitudes, on optimism, on a whole range of things. So I was very disappointed, but I wasn’t surprised.”
Biden also said he did not bully Harris into her comments on The View when she said there was “not a thing that comes to mind” when asked what she would have done differently from Biden.
“Well, look, first of all, I did not advise her to say that number one,” Biden said. “Like I said, I was vice president. I understand the role.”
Biden explained that Harris likely meant she would not have changed any of the “successes” their administration garnered in office.
However, the Trump campaign repeatedly blasted Harris’s comments during multiple campaign stops and included the comments in ads across the nation.
“So I think that that was used in a way that is contrary to what she meant … when she said that, and I think that, you know, she was part of every success we had,” Biden continued.
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According to Biden, he and Harris “stay in touch.”
“She’s sought my opinion. I’m not going to tell you what it is,” Biden said about Harris’s future, as she mulls a run for California governor or president in 2028. “All kidding aside, she’s got a difficult decision to make about what she’s going to do. I hope she stays fully engaged. I think she’s first-rate, but we have a lot of really good candidates as well. So I’m optimistic, I’m not pessimistic.”
