(LifeSiteNews) — Former President Joe Biden and his wife Jill made his first post-presidency media appearance Thursday on left-wing talk show The View, where an attempt to deny the Democrat leader’s cognitive decline instead demonstrated it.
“Since you left office, there have been a number of books that have come out, deeply sourced from Democratic sources, that claim in your final year there was a dramatic decline in your cognitive abilities,” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said. “What is your response to these allegations? Are these sources wrong?”
“They are wrong,” Biden responded. “There’s nothing to sustain that number one. Number two, think of what we left with. We left with a circumstance where we had an insurrection when I started.”
His reply grew more incoherent as it went on: “Not since the Civil War we had, we had a circumstance where we were in a position that we, well—the pandemic, because of the incompetence of the last outfit—end up over a million people dying. Million people dying.”
“We’re also in a situation where we found ourselves unable to deal with a lot of just basic issues and, which I won’t go into in the interest of time,” he added. “And so we went to work and we got it done. And, you know, one of the things that that well…”
It was then that the former First Lady intervened to answer for her husband.
“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, he would, I’d be in bed, you know, reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings, working with staff.”
“Being president is not like a job. It’s a lifestyle. It’s a life that you live,” she added. “You live it 24 hours a day—that phone can ring at 11 o’clock at night or two in the morning. It’s constant. You never leave it. And Joe worked really hard. I think he was a great president. And if you look at things—if you look at things today, give me Joe Biden, anytime.”
Former Pres. Biden responds to reports questioning his cognitive abilities while in office, saying on #TheView, “They are wrong.”
“The people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us,” former first lady Jill Biden added. “If you look at things today, give me Joe… pic.twitter.com/JndjhBmDMf
— The View (@TheView) May 8, 2025
At 78 when he took office, Biden was the oldest president in history. He was famously gaffe-prone throughout his decades in politics, but during the 2020 campaign serious questions began to solidify about Biden’s fitness for public office at his advanced age, due to his increasing frequency of odd and incoherent statements, as well as moments in which he appeared lost and confused. These incidents sparked a marked increase in speculation from friends and foes alike as to whether his mind was deteriorating, so much so that during the 2020 campaign, Biden pledged only to serve one term “if anything changed in my health” to render him incapable of the job.
He attempted to follow through with his reelection bid in 2024, campaigning for months despite growing concerns about his age and mental health even among Democrats. Most of the party and its allies were content to brush off such criticisms as fake news, conspiracy theories, and even “selectively edited video” as late as June 2024, but the narrative turned on its head by the end of that month with Biden’s performance against Republican opponent Donald Trump in a debate hosted by CNN.
That debate, throughout which Biden appeared strikingly tired and vacant with difficulty speaking clearly, sent Democrats into a panic, with many suddenly speaking openly about their doubts about his ability to win the election. Yet for weeks the White House resisted calls for the president to bow out. On July 21, Biden finally relented, announcing via letter his decision to abandon his reelection bid and endorse his Vice President Kamala Harris to be nominated in his place. He did not, however, acquiesce to calls by Republicans and others to resign from the presidency entirely, and Harris went on to lose to Trump.
A CBS News/YouGov poll released in September 2023 found that 77 percent of Americans, including 79 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats, would support cutoff points for elderly officeholders.
