Politics

Jill Biden Worried Her Husband Was Drugged on Debate Night

In a new memoir, Jill Biden describes her own shock and fear over the president’s calamitous performance.

First published in The Atlantic on May 28, 2026.

by Toluse Olorunnipa, The Atlantic

June 3, 2026 | reading time: 6 Min.

As she watched President Biden stumble through the most cringeworthy portion of his disastrous June 2024 debate, First Lady Jill Biden wondered if her husband had unknowingly ingested drugs or was having a medical episode on live television. “Is he short-circuiting?” Jill Biden thought. “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?”