First Lady Jill Biden isn’t too happy about leaving. Or maybe she is since she got a rough lesson in human nature, which she readily admits in this interview with The Washington Post. Lady Macbeth thought she could drag her husband, braindead Joe Biden, across the finish line.
She had everyone fooled for a while, along with the president’s inner circle, top allies on the Hill, and the media claiming that Joe was sharp as a tack. Then, the CNN debate in June of 2024 obliterated that narrative, which followed multiple lengthy pieces, specifically in The Wall Street Journal, which blew the lid off this elaborate cover-up to hide the president’s mental decline.
After that debate, Nancy Pelosi outmaneuvered the president’s political team and booted him off the 2024 ticket. It was a coup. Joe got wheeled off the cliff so easily, highlighting the old axiom that there’s a difference between an influential person and a powerful office—they’re not the same thing. Pelosi isn’t even in the congressional leadership anymore, and she was the grim reaper for the Biden White House. Even Pelosi admitted that Joe’s team was out of their depth and unimpressive, which allowed her to bum-rush the whole operation. Jill has known Nancy for 50 years, and you can sense the tension in the prose here (via WaPo):
The first lady says she’s at peace with this ending. But.
“Let’s just say I was disappointed with how it unfolded.”
Why?
“I don’t know. I learned a lot about human nature.”
Meaning ...
“I think that’s all I’m going to say.”
It isn’t all she’s going to say. You see, lately, Jill Biden has been thinking a lot about relationships. There’s the monumental one, with the 46th president, her husband of nearly 48 years. Then there are the scores of relationships, good and bad, that pinwheel outward from her marriage, in which Jill is the keeper of the family grudges.
“You said that, I didn’t!” she interrupts, laughing. “I don’t think I said that.”
She did, in fact, say that. “Joe has an incredible capacity to forgive, and he’s incapable of holding a grudge,” Jill wrote in her 2019 memoir. “But that means I end up being the holder of grudges,” the one who recalls “every slight committed against the people I love.”
Which brings us to Nancy Pelosi, whom Jill has known nearly as long as Joe. Who had been a close friend to Joe as they ascended to the highest tier of American politics. Whom Jill couldn’t wait to invite to the White House once coronavirus restrictions allowed the Bidens to entertain. And who went on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in July with a shiv.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” Pelosi said, even though Biden had already decided that he was staying in the race.
“Like I said,” Jill says now, seated in the Green Room of the White House on the first Sunday of January, “I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships.”
Her face, nearly pearlescent with lustrous foundation, betrays no particular emotion. She’s holding a china cup.
Tea. With honey and lemon.
“It’s been on my mind a lot lately, and — ”
Jill pauses.
“We were friends for 50 years.” She is using her teacher’s voice now. “It was disappointing.”
This woman can’t stand to be seated next to Kamala Harris—she holds grudges and likely has an enemy list. Jill likely understood the lengths Democrats will go to hold onto power. Even lifelong friends and family are not safe from sacrifice.
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