Jill Biden says she worried Joe Biden was having a stroke during 2024 debate

First Lady Jill Biden joins her husband, US President Joe Biden, on stage at the end of the first presidential debate of the 2024 elections with former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at CNN's studios in Atlanta, Georgia, in June 2024. (Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

Former U.S. first lady Jill Biden says former U.S. President Joe Biden’s performance in his 2024 debate against Donald Trump “scared me to death,” and she worried her husband was having a stroke.

“I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,” Jill Biden told CBS News in an interview slated to air Sunday. CBS published a clip from the interview Wednesday.

“I don’t know what happened,” she said. “As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.”

Her comments were a blunt acknowledgement, nearly two years after the fact, of what tens of millions of Americans watched in real time: Biden, then 81 and facing concerns about his age and health, turned in a disastrous performance that undermined his bid for a second term. A hoarse Biden repeatedly stumbled over words and phrases as he delivered meandering responses to questions.

Biden’s campaign – and Jill Biden – worked hard to put a positive spin on the debate immediately afterward. In a post-debate event that night, Jill Biden said, “Joe, you did such a great job. You answered every question. You knew all the facts.”

Biden’s aides insisted the debate was an anomaly – one bad night from an aging, but still energetic and competent, president.

Shortly after the debate, Biden traveled to North Carolina, where he acknowledged he was “not a young man. I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to.”

But in late July – less than four weeks after the debate, and the Democratic Party in a panic over the prospect of a disastrous election – Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race and threw his support behind his vice president, Kamala Harris.

The interview comes as Jill Biden prepares for a June 2 start to a book tour to promote “View from the East Wing,” her forthcoming memoir about her time in the White House.

A Biden aide did not immediately respond to CNN’s questions about Jill Biden’s CBS interview.

In an interview last spring on ABC’s “The View,” Joe Biden said claims he faced cognitive decline during his term in office, including in “Original Sin,” a book by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, were “wrong” and said there is “nothing to sustain that.”

Jill Biden also jumped in to defend her husband in the ABC interview, claiming his schedule as president was “nonstop.”

“The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us, and they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day,” she said. “I mean, he’d get up, he put in a full day, and then at night … I’d be in bed, you know, reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings, working with staff.”