Editorial: Jill Biden betrayed us all

Boston Herald editorial staff, Boston Herald on Jun 4, 2026

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Jill Biden’s book tour is exposing what is so wrong with the Democratic Party.

She feared her husband, then-President Joe Biden, was having a stroke on the debate stage when his mind drifted to somewhere beyond Pluto. That was on June 27, 2024, when he said at one key juncture: “Making sure that we’re able to make every single solitary person eligible for what I’ve been able to do with the, uh, with, with, with the COVID. Excuse me, with, dealing with everything we have to do with … look, if — we finally beat Medicare.”

What? Joe Biden should never have been on that stage, and his wife is finally admitting it. The Democratic Party was being greedy. If power corrupts, that is what was on display that night. The Democrats were convinced America would accept a subpar president — but this?

Joe Biden did not end his reelection bid until almost a month later, on July 21, 2024.

His party was in denial, and the hesitation cost them the general election. Good!

The Democrats have yet to understand what propelled Donald Trump back to the presidency. He delivered his message like a punch. He hit in succession with what he would do to fix the immigration crisis and how he would make America first. That message resonated with voters.

Joe Biden struggled to put a complete sentence together, and that is the flaw of our two-party system. Our elections have fixed what’s wrong over the decades, but thinking a tired candidate with a long resume is the answer should now be obsolete. Call it the Biden Effect.

Gov. Maura Healey and our Congressional delegation don’t abide by that rule. They are locked in party politics at all costs because they don’t want to lose their seats in Congress.

Jill Biden does not care anymore; she wants to sell her book and seek retribution from handlers who messed up her husband’s legacy. She’s spilling her secrets and excuses, but the hard truth is in the comments on her story on the Wall Street Journal website, where one reader precisely states: “The Biden inner circle treated the presidency like a family inheritance to be preserved, rather than a high-stakes constitutional responsibility.”

We need strong presidents. Period!

Mistakes will happen, and political philosophies will clash, but the President of the United States must be able to lead. He or she must be able to weigh all the options and make the best decision for the country — not the party.

You must respect Jill Biden’s stance that she let her husband decide his own fate, but that calls into question this entire memoir. If she felt this strongly that her husband was hurting — enough to be the book’s top-selling point — why didn’t she act? She betrayed the American people and did her husband more harm than good.

It’s easy to offer up excuses now, but if she had anticipated Joe Biden’s slipping command of reality, she could have stopped him from embarrassing himself and putting the nation in danger.

We can only speculate what would have transpired if Jill said to Joe, “Honey, be a one-term president.”