Despite mounting pressure from Democrats to consider his political future following a debate over a car crash, Joe Biden appears to be holding firm in the race with Jill Biden stubbornly at his side.
And her actions over the past 48 hours make it clear that she is the one firmly pulling the strings on her husband’s decision to stay in the race.
She made clear when speaking to wealthy donors in New York on Friday night that she knew how the debate was perceived, but said she told her husband the campaign would continue.
“So let’s talk about last night’s debate, because I know that’s on your mind,” she said. “As Joe said today, he’s not a young man. And you know, after the debate last night, he said, ‘You know, Jill, I don’t know what happened. I didn’t feel so good.’ And I said, ‘Look, Joe, we’re not going to let 90 minutes define the four years that you’ve been president.'”
CNN’s performance, in which Joe Biden wandered between answers and lost his train of thought, caused unprecedented panic in the party.
Key policymakers and industry operators were immediately considering their options.
But when Biden attended a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, on Friday, he seemed like a different man. Jill Biden called it an “amazing” event.
During the debate, he admitted that his performance was not ideal, but insisted that he will continue in the race. The crowd of more than 2,000 applauded him.
His defiant announcement came alongside the one person likely to stand between him and a potentially historic decision to step aside: his wife Jill.
Even though she knows he had a rough night at the first presidential debate, she is stubbornly standing by her husband and fighting fears that he will lose the November contest to Donald Trump.
The Bidens know she “didn’t have the best first debate,” a source close to her told DailyMail.com. ‘Is she the best person to be president, now and for the next four years? 100% yes.’
“She is his wife of 47 years; she is his greatest supporter, his greatest defender and his greatest believer.”
President Biden, 81, has the nomination locked in. The only way for the party to have a different candidate is for him to voluntarily drop out of the race.
Jill Biden redoubles her support for President Joe Biden
And the only person who can get Biden to do it is Jill Biden. Only after receiving her blessing did he agree to run for a second term. She is his closest advisor and the person he listens to the most.
But Jill Biden is nowhere near concluding that her husband should drop out of the race. She said it herself at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, the day after the debate.
Wearing a dress emblazoned with the word “vote” several times, she told the crowd: “We don’t choose our chapter in history, but we can choose who guides us through it. And right now, with these dangers facing the world, there is no one I would rather have sitting in the Oval Office right now than my husband.
And after the debate, he lavishly praised Joe Biden, even as many Democrats were beating their heads over his clumsy debate performance.
“Joe, you did a great job answering all the questions. You knew all the facts,” she told him at a meeting with her supporters.
Many called her out of touch with the events of the night. What her words demonstrated, however, was the weight she carries with the president. She is the one Joe Biden turns to for reassurance. She is the one who can act as a balm for his wounded pride.
Now it’s a question of what he does next.
Jill Biden has stepped in before when she thought her advisers weren’t taking good care of Joe Biden. After his disastrous first press conference, she stormed into a staff meeting and demanded to know who was responsible for the event and why it wasn’t stopped.
At her next press conference, she sat in a chair front and center, taking command.
The question is what he will do now: Will he push for changes in the campaign? Will he call for staff to be fired? Will he put Joe Biden in the public eye more? Or will he urge the White House to continue using staged events and keep him surrounded by aides?
The full impact on Biden’s inner sanctum remains to be seen, but Jill Biden will be at the center of whatever comes next.
He will probably come out of this with more power than ever in the White House. She is the one who sees Joe Biden the most, even in the most private moments. She is the one who truly knows his health and mental state.
She is the one who has defended him when his age is questioned.
“I know what’s on your mind, so let’s talk about age in this election,” Jill Biden said at a fundraiser in Philadelphia on Monday night. “This election is not about age. Joe and the other guy are about the same age. This election is about character, wisdom and ability.”
Furthermore, she is the one who usually intervenes in his events, to take him by the arm and guide him back to the right path when he hesitates. And that role played out in real time at the debate, when a video of her helping the president down the stairs from the stage at the end of the event went viral.
And as the true extent of Biden’s missteps were revealed in real time during last night’s debate, Jill Biden’s loyalty is being questioned — not just by Republicans, who have called her the president’s adviser, but by Democrats who are Biden supporters.
“I guess I should start by saying, without apology, that I love Joe Biden and Jill,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough said the morning after the disastrous debate.
She added that it was time to ask whether Biden should remain on the ticket: “But if you believe, as I do and as so many people who watch this show do, that you fear how dark a place a second Donald Trump term will take America, then I think it’s critical that we ask those same questions about this man who I love, respect, and whose public service in saving this country from Donald Trump over the last three and a half years I honor and will always honor.”
Jill Biden gave Joe Biden a hug after the debate ended on Thursday
Those who know her argue that the fallout from the debate will cause her to double down on Team Biden.
‘Our First Lady is a fighter and a competitor. She and the Biden family have been here before… when his political obituary was being written and he was down and counting. The collective reaction to tonight’s debate will only reinforce their courage and resolve – they will redouble their efforts to run. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up for debate. That’s who they are – don’t quit. Don’t expect anything to change in this race,’ her former press secretary Michael LaRosa wrote in X.
Jill Biden has always been the cornerstone of the Biden family.
She proved it during her most difficult week since Beau Biden’s death in 2015: the week her stepson Hunter stood trial while her husband was on a state visit to France, forcing her to balance her public and private roles.
Hunter Biden’s trial on federal gun charges exposed the family’s darkest secrets: His voice echoed through the courtroom as prosecutors used his own audiobook to play scenes of his drug use, his ex-wife talked about finding his drug paraphernalia and his brother’s widow described how he got her addicted to crack cocaine.
Jill Biden was there, accused of wasting taxpayer money on her four round-trip flights across the Atlantic that week for a personal family matter, so she could be there for her son while also fulfilling her first-class duties. lady in France.
The White House noted that she loves her son and, like any mother, wants to be there for him. And she sent him her best wishes from her front row seat.
“I haven’t seen her find the strength she found that week in a long time. I mean, actually from the period of 2015, when Beau was dying or after her death, she had to get back on her feet,’ a senior White House official told DailyMail.com about that time period.
“There’s steel in her, right? She just says, let’s do it.”
That steel, however, could turn rigid, a determination to keep Joe Biden in the White House simply to defy his critics.
Some describe his reasons for wanting to remain in the White House as a strategy of power and “revenge.”
“He likes power. He wants to stay. He wants some kind of revenge,” historian David Brinkley told CBS’s Face the Nation in February.
Jill Biden holds Hunter Biden’s hand after he and his wife Melissa Cohen (right) leave the courtroom following his guilty verdict.
Jill Biden gives Joe Biden a kiss: the couple has been married for 48 years
But the White House notes that the first lady has her own agenda for a second term: expansion of preschool education, more funding for community colleges, restoration of abortion rights and a greater priority on women’s health.
And they argue that their top priority is the defeat of Donald Trump.
Jill Biden, like the president, fervently believes Trump will destroy democracy: “Trump has told us over and over again why he wants the White House. To give himself absolute power. “Not to be held accountable for his criminal actions,” she said in Los Angeles earlier this month. “To destroy the democratic safeguards that stand in his way.”
However, Democrats are now wondering if Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump.
The former president was leading Biden in key states before the debate. The fear is that Trump’s poll numbers will rise.
David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to Obama, said Biden’s performance shocked the party.
“I think there was a sense of shock at how he came out at the beginning of the debate, how his voice sounded, he seemed a little disoriented,” he told CNN.
Also in question is the legacy of Biden, who came to power during the 2020 election to calm the country after the chaos of the Trump presidency.
But if he loses in November, history will rewrite its view of him and Jill Biden.
That steel of the first lady, her loyalty to her husband for 48 years, could make her blind to that.
‘First Lady scholars know that every couple contemplates their legacy. The Bidens are no different,’ Stacy Cordery, a professor at Iowa State University and expert on first ladies, told DailyMail.com.
‘It took Joe Biden a long time to get to the White House. Even if Jill had the power in their marriage to force him to resign, I don’t think she would use it, because she loves him too much.’