Former first lady Jill Biden recently admitted in an interview tied to her new memoir that she was “frightened” by her husband Joe Biden’s performance during the June 2024 presidential debate, believing he might be having a stroke.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Biden told CBS News Sunday Morning’s Rita Braver in an interview airing on May 31. “I don’t know what happened.” She added, “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

Biden dropped out of the presidential race approximately one month after the debate and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, leaving 107 days before the general election. He became the first sitting president to withdraw from a race since Lyndon B. Johnson stepped aside in 1968.

Trump highlighted Biden’s reported confusion during the debate in a May 29 social media post, questioning why Biden’s wife did not rush onto the stage to assist her husband when she believed he was having a stroke. The admission by Jill Biden has drawn attention because Democrats and their allies had previously insisted that voters were misinterpreting the event as a “bad night” rather than a genuine crisis.

The timeline confirms Biden exited the race shortly after the debate, with his wife’s firsthand account now standing in stark contrast to earlier claims about his fitness for office.