Jill Biden feared Joe was DRUGGED during debate meltdown... then he made bombshell confession backstage

By ROSS IBBETSON, ASSOCIATE EDITOR Published: 14:22, 28 May 2026 | Updated: 14:28, 28 May 2026 Jill Biden feared her husband Joe had been drugged as he melted down on stage during his disastrous debate against Donald Trump.  The former first lady, 74, watched in horror as Biden stumbled over his words, terrified that voters would conclude this was how he always was, she writes in a bombshell new memoir.  'Is this a stroke? I felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew, and the hologram was glitching. Has he been drugged?' Jill writes in View From the East Wing. She remembers thinking: 'Oh God - will people watching assume this is how he is all the time?' Biden appeared frail and lost his train of thought repeatedly as he slurred his way through the infamous June 2024 clash with Trump, a watershed moment that triggered Democratic allies to openly question his fitness for office.  It wasn't just his supporters who saw disaster: Joe himself admitted he'd suffered a primetime car crash in front of the voting public, Jill reveals.  As Biden walked off stage, he whispered to her: 'I really f**ked up, didn't I?' '"Yes, you did," I whispered back,' Jill writes.  The First Lady, 74, was one of Biden's closest confidantes and a driving force behind his 2024 reelection bid. She fiercely advocated for him to stay in the race after the debate and had a tense relationship with his ultimate successor for the Democratic candidacy, Kamala Harris. 'You did such a great job, you answered every question, you knew all the facts,' Jill told her husband on stage when they joined supporters after the debate.   But just weeks later, the 83-year-old was forced to drop out. Since leaving office, Biden has since been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones. Biden became the first incumbent president to abandon a re-election bid since Lyndon B Johnson in 1968.  He faced widespread criticism for not stepping aside sooner, once it became clear he was not capable of running for a second term. When he finally withdrew, Biden endorsed Harris on the spot, effectively shutting the door on an open Democratic primary. Last week, a bombshell Democratic Party autopsy underlined how Jill was prioritized over Harris by the White House during the 2024 election.  Vice President Kamala Harris and first lady Jill Biden attend a ceremony during the National Veterans Day Observance in Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., November 11, 2024  His age and inability to communicate effectively sparked widespread health fears for Biden The report states Biden's White House lavished polling and strategy on Jill, while leaving Harris so neglected that aides had no research prepared when she was thrust onto the ticket. The 192-page dossier commissioned by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) wrote that the Biden White House ordered extensive polling on the settings, issues, and messaging Dr Jill should use to support her husband's presidency. However, no equivalent research was ever commissioned for Harris, leaving pollsters scrambling to get three emergency studies into the field the moment Biden stepped aside in July 2024. The author, veteran Democratic strategist Paul Rivera, brands the failure a 'massive missed opportunity' and concludes the White House never positioned or prepared its own Vice President to face Trump. 'As a result, at the moment of the candidate switch the polling team discovered there was no self-research on the Vice President to guide the development of the research instruments,' Rivera wrote.  'An incumbent Vice President. With no research to share once she became the nominee.' 'Had the White House explored and evaluated ways to leverage Kamala Harris earlier in the administration, perhaps it would have improved the President's standing, and it certainly could have helped prepare her to lead the ticket,' Rivera wrote. The dossier was initially published by CNN with heavy annotations from the DNC disputing the accuracy of many of the report's claims. No comments have so far been submitted. Why not be the first to send us your thoughts, or debate this issue live on our message boards. By posting your comment you agree to our house rules. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? Your comment will be posted to MailOnline as usual We will automatically post your comment and a link to the news story to your Facebook timeline at the same time it is posted on MailOnline. To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. We’ll ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. You can choose on each post whether you would like it to be posted to Facebook. 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