'Who knows': Jill Biden asked if someone 'laced Joe's drink' before disastrous debate
WASHINGTON, DC: Former First Lady Jill Biden said she still could not explain Joe Biden's disastrous performance at the June 2024 CNN presidential debate against Donald Trump, when asked whether he might have been "laced" with something.
Her “who knows?” response came after she said doctors checked Biden and told her he was fine.
She reflected on the debate and the questions that followed it during 'The Jamie Kern Lima Show' interview, released on Thursday, August 20.
Jill Biden says she cannot explain the debate
Asked by host Jamie Kern Lima whether anyone could have “laced his drink,” Biden did not rule it out, responding, “Who knows? Who knows?”
The exchange came after Lima raised online conspiracy theories about the debate and asked whether Biden could have suffered a stroke or unknowingly taken something.
Jill Biden said she and Joe Biden each had teams of doctors around them and that doctors examined him after the debate.
She recalled being told, “Jill, he’s fine. He’s okay.”
Jill Biden said she was anxious after the performance and wanted to know what was wrong. But she also pointed to what happened afterward as part of why the debate remained difficult for her to explain.
“We went on to do three events that night, and he was fine!” Jill Biden said.
She described Joe Biden making a speech, visiting a Waffle House, and traveling to North Carolina before getting off a plane at 3 am to greet supporters.
Former first lady never asked doctors about a stroke
Lima separately asked whether doctors were able to definitively determine that Biden had not suffered a stroke that night.
Jill Biden explained that she had not directly asked doctors whether he had suffered one. Instead, she said her concern at the time was simply whether he was OK.
“I just said, ‘Is he OK? Is he OK?’” she said.
She described the episode as “such an aberration” because of how different his debate performance appeared from his activities afterward.
The former first lady said she was not with Biden for much of the period leading up to the debate.
She had been traveling herself and said she saw him about an hour before the event.
Jill Biden says her husband had been tired
Biden offered one possible piece of context but stopped short of identifying a definitive explanation.
“He had been traveling,” she said. “I know he was tired. He didn’t feel well that day when I saw him.”
She added that there was “nothing definitive” she could point to and acknowledged that she had not seen him in the days or weeks before the debate.
Lima pressed her on whether she had a gut instinct about what happened during the performance, noting that Jill Biden knew her husband better than anyone.
Jill Biden said she did not.
“I can’t figure it out. That is my honest-to-God true answer. I don’t know,” she said.
Lima noted that conspiracy theories about the episode could persist, and Jill Biden agreed.
“Oh, and it’ll go on forever. It’ll go on forever, I’m sure,” she said.
