First lady Jill Biden pulled her husband away from Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro when he raised concerns about the state of then-President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, according to a bombshell new book about the attempt to cover up the former commander-in-chief’s decline during his term of office.
The Bidens met with Shapiro for a private conversation in Harrisburg on July 7, 2024, 10 days after the incumbent’s catastrophic debate performance against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to the account in “Original Sin,” co-authored by Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper.
At one point, Biden asked Shapiro, “How do you think it’s going out there?” in reference to the campaign. In response, Thompson and Tapper wrote, the governor “decided to give it to him straight.”
“I’ll be honest, Mr. President, I have some concerns,” Shapiro said, pointing to polling that showed “a rapid erosion of support for the president in must-win Pennsylvania within the previous few days.
“He didn’t think the campaign sufficiently acknowledged the pain inflation was causing,” Thompson and Tapper wrote. “And while the president needed to prove the debate had been an aberration, for some reason he hadn’t yet done so.”
According to Shapiro, the president tried to address some of the governor’s concerns. But before he could do so in full, Jill Biden gave what the authors called “a clear signal that the conversation was over.”
“Alright,” the first lady said, standing up. “We gotta go.”
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As the first couple pulled away, Shapiro thought the Bidens “didn’t want to hear the facts on the ground,” according to Thompson and Tapper.
Exactly two weeks later, Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris. On Nov. 5, Trump won Pennsylvania’s key 19 electoral votes by more than 120,000 ballots out of nearly 7 million cast.
Going into the July 7 conversation, Shapiro had been unsure how “much the president’s senior advisers were telling him about how bad things really were for him,” the authors claimed.
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Throughout Biden’s presidency, the first lady was widely seen as one of the key people shielding him from scrutiny over his mental acuity, in what some insiders dubbed “Operation Bubble Wrap.”
Jill Biden sought to limit Joe’s access to the press and lashed out at staffers who neglected to cut short the president’s appearances when he started fumbling his words.
The former first lady didn’t take kindly to lawmakers — even Joe’s staunchest public supporters — privately voicing their concerns to her about the president’s declining state.
Days before the Bidens’ meeting with Shapiro, then-Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) offered “a full-throated defense and endorsement of the president” at a July 3, 2024, event in the Wolverine State before coming to Jill with her worries about Joe, according to Thompson and Tapper.
By that point, Stabenow “barely recognized the man she’d seen on that debate stage,” the authors claimed.
Stabenow, who was at the event with Jill and took press questions after the former first lady refused, “asked for a minute” with Jill after the function.
“She told Jill that she’d known Joe for a long, long time and supported him on every level. But, Stabenow said, she and her colleagues were concerned about what they’d seen at the debate,” Thompson and Tapper wrote. “They cared about Joe. They were worried about him.”
“We don’t know if this was a one-time thing or if there’s something more going on with the president, Stabenow said to the First Lady. But you know.”
The authors claim Jill “didn’t answer the senator’s implied question” and that she later “fumed about it to White House staffers.”
Joe’s post-debate condition alarmed campaign staffers as well.
“What are we doing here?” one adviser thought as he discussed campaign plans with the president aboard Air Force One, according to the book.
“This guy can’t even form a f–king sentence,” the adviser said of his post-debate interaction with Joe.
“If I had a conversation like this with someone who wasn’t the president, I would be worried about his health. And here he is, the sitting president of the United States,” the adviser thought.
In anticipation of the book’s release, Biden has done a mini-media tour, giving interviews to the BBC and ABC News’ “The View” in an apparent attempt to defend his legacy.
During the latter appearance, Biden was asked what he thought of claims of a “dramatic decline” in his cognitive abilities.
“They are wrong, there’s nothing to sustain that,” he said defiantly, before giving a lengthy answer in which he stumbled over his words, causing the former first lady to butt in.
“The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us,” JIll Biden said. “And they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day.”
“Original Sin” is available May 20.
