Jill Biden’s book tour is officially underway, and the hits just keep on coming.
After sending shockwaves through Washington, D.C., and beyond with her claim that she thought her husband, then-President Joe Biden, was having a stroke during the disastrous June 2024 debate against Donald Trump that ended his political career, the former first lady was none too pleased with the line of questioning she received from a surprisingly pointed and persistent Craig Melvin on the Today show.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by Emily Jashinsky, host of MK Media’s After Party, to discuss Biden’s book tour and why the former first lady isn’t getting the reception she likely thought she would.
Poorly Received
When Biden chose to write her new book, View from the East Wing: A Memoir, she presumably assumed she would be welcomed back to the national stage with open arms.
That’s not exactly what has happened.
While CBS Sunday Morning’s Rita Braver gave her kid-glove treatment in her first interview for the memoir, the news Biden made on that program about thinking her husband was having a stroke has made Dems apoplectic as they try to focus all of their efforts on the 2026 midterms.
To that point, Jashinsky noted the former Obama staffers behind the Pod Save America podcast recently laid bare just how big a headache the Biden decline coverup continues to be for the party.
“They were like, people don’t understand how the Biden cognitive decline scandal is affecting people’s perceptions of Democrats around the country… Every single Democratic candidate and many pundits who are supporting Democratic candidates now have to climb themselves out of this deep hole, just in terms of people’s general vibe about whether or not they are trustworthy,” she explained. “And national Democrats seem to have no idea how much of that goes directly back to them going on camera over and over again over the course… saying he is fine.”
While Jashinsky acknowledged that Democrat voters aren’t voting on that issue alone, it remains fresh in everyone’s mind thanks to people like “Dr.” Jill. “They can’t escape it right now in a midterm cycle [because] Jill Biden decided to sell a damn book in the middle of a midterm cycle,” she noted. “It’s amazing, the selfishness.”
The Freak Out
But Biden either doesn’t recognize the selfishness or, more likely, doesn’t care. She was quick to drop several more bombshells as Melvin pressed her answers Monday morning. Here was their exchange about the infamous debate and her now even more infamous revelation about her alleged concerns:
MELVIN: How do you square thinking that he may have had a stroke with what you were saying in the days and weeks after? How do you square that?
BIDEN: Well, Craig, look at it from my point of view. So, I’m watching, just like everybody else was scared to death. Like, what is going on? He gets off the stage. I see he appears to be okay. He says to me, ‘Jill, I really, in other words, messed up, didn’t I?’ And I said, ‘Yes, you did.’ And so we get off and I know we’re going into another event, or we have two more to do, and my mind is racing. What do I say to him? What do I say to him? I’m his wife, I’ve got to lift him up. So, we go to the next event, and I’m thinking, what do I say that will lift him up that is true? I want to say the things that are true. So, I said, you know, ‘You answered every question.’ My mind’s racing, you know.
MELVIN: That’s a pretty low bar.
BIDEN: [nervous chuckle] Well, and so I, you know, I had to sort of lift him up. I mean, I’m his wife. I’m not going to get out on the stage there and say, ‘Joe, you really screwed that up’… I had to support him, I couldn’t come out and, I mean, really publicly say, ‘Joe, you did a terrible job in that debate.’
Megyn said the hypocrisy is galling. “She bullied every member of the Democrat Party who was even mildly critical of him on the mental health question, both before and after the debate,” she recalled. “All the news from then that day to this has been about how bitter Jill and Joe are that he was forced out of the campaign after that, the indignity of it, how unfair they thought it was, and now she admits the whole reason she said ‘you answered every question’ is because it was the only true statement she could think of to say to him after what she recognized was a disaster? The nerve.”
But it got worse, in Megyn’s view, when Melvin asked the former first lady whether her husband should have even run for reelection in the first place.
MELVIN: If you could go back in a time machine and do it all over again, would you have encouraged him maybe to not run again?
BIDEN: You know, as I look back, would I want to put Joe through the hurt and the pain that we felt during that time? Never. Never. I mean, it was so hurtful, and–
MELVIN: So, it sounds like you’re saying, if you could do it all over again, you probably would have encouraged him to be a one-term president.
BIDEN: But it had to be his decision, Craig.
Megyn said it is hard to imagine Dems being able to swallow that one. “The pain he went through? I’m not a Democrat, I was never voting for Joe Biden, but, if I were, I think I’d be feeling rage throughout my entire body,” she noted. “The pain he went through as a result of him choosing to run again, and then embarrassing himself on the national stage, and getting forced out? The Democrat Party is apoplectic right now for the fact that Donald Trump is president… and it’s because of Joe Biden.”
That question seemed to leave the former first lady particularly perturbed, which might explain why things finally bubbled over the way they ultimately did when she dropped this gem:
BIDEN: I think we have to point out, Craig, like that’s one chapter of my book. My book is not about politics, it’s about me, my reflections, my life, my life as a teacher, my life is the first working… first lady. I went to work. I taught at a community college. I took a paycheck. I wanted to say to American women, ‘Look at me, I’m like you are.’
Megyn joked that it was giving Gayle ‘I’m inspirational’ King vibes after her poorly received Blue Origin trip to space, but she also believes it was actually the most revealing moment of the interview.
“That shows her panic. The earlier questions [were] all about the nonsense in the chapter about Joe Biden and his mental deterioration, the debate, and all that, but that is her in a panic [signaling] this was supposed to be about me,” Megyn posited. “She is basically saying, ‘My booker and your booker agreed you were going to talk about me and what an inspiration I am. Where is that, Craig?'”
Money Talks
What makes this whole book tour even more confusing, in Megyn’s view, is the fact that President Biden is now said to have a stage 4 cancer diagnosis and yet his wife seems to have no problem exploiting his well-documented but long-denied cognitive decline.
“She wouldn’t pile on him the night of the debate, but she is fine piling on him now that he has stage four bone cancer,” Megyn wondered. “Now would be a much better time to hurt the husband?”
Jashinsky believes there is but one reason Dr. Jill is back at it: Money.
“Joe Biden didn’t cash out and go into lobbying or anything like that, and I think it made [his family] deeply resentful of the way that they lived,” she explained. “They want to be rich… and they have always had to have [his siblings and son Hunter] off stage coming up with money and lobbying, peddling the influence, and then putting it all back into the family in one way or the other, instead of just like being able to live comfortably and sort of bask in the glow of Joe Biden’s career and be wealthy.”
Enter the former first lady’s memoir. “I think that’s how desperate they are to be rich,” Jashinsky posited. “I think she had some knowledge that people have turned on the Biden family and turned on her… and she was still willing to go out there and sell this book.”
“Her husband… I’m sorry, but he is probably in the process of dying right now… and his wife is up in New York trying to sell this book by spilling inside details about when he had probably the most embarrassing moment of his entire life,” she continued. “He is willing to let it happen, apparently, because he wants them to be okay when he is gone. He wants them to have money, and I think that is what this is about at the end of the day.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Jashinsky by tuning in to episode 1,329 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.