July 3, 2024 - 10:00am
Before entering the White House, First Lady Jill Biden spent her years as an educator teaching high school and college students. The skills she learned there no doubt helped her last week when she cooed to her husband: “Joe, you did such a great job,” following his disastrous debate performance. “You answered every question,” she assured him. “You knew all the facts.”
Over the last few days, Jill Biden has become an increasingly prominent figure on the campaign trail. Just this week Vogue released a glowing profile of the First Lady, featuring on its cover the quotation “We will decide our future.” A fashion writer at the Washington Post called the image of Jill “saintly”, saying that it “burnishes the image of the first lady as dedicated, but not arrogant. Pure. A savior, even: the only person who truly has her husband’s ear.”
But who, exactly, is she saving? Much to the chagrin of many Democratic operatives, and the delight of Republicans, it appears that Jill isn’t letting Joe ride off into the sunset anytime soon. Biden advisers claim that Joe’s family, including Jill and his son Hunter, “implored the President to keep fighting in his bid for reelection”. The family is blaming Biden’s team, not his 81 years of age, for his poor performance at the debate last week.
“People don’t mention her when they talk about Biden’s key advisers, but she’s his gut check and his closest confidant,” New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers told Vogue. Or, to quote My Big Fat Greek Wedding, “The man may be the head of the household. But the woman is the neck, and she can turn the head whichever way she pleases.”
Apparently, Jill has decided to frame Joe’s debate performance as “a bad night”, according to Rogers. Which means that the fawning Vogue profile about the one person with the power to encourage Joe to pull out, at least according to the Biden camp, won’t do it. As Jill told Vogue, “we will not let those 90 minutes define the four years he’s been president. We will continue to fight (We being the operative word here)”.
It’s obvious that Jill thinks she belongs in the White House. Joe claimed in Jill’s first Vogue cover story three years ago that she was the one who told him to run in 2020. “It was clear to me that she knew exactly what she would do if she were first lady,” he added. “And so she came in, I think — knowing the experience of being vice president, knowing the power of the presidency — knowing that she could change things.”
The White House would never admit the extent to which Jill appears to be in charge, but one wonders whether she will someday receive hagiographies similar to those of Edith Wilson, the first lady who filled in for her ailing husband Woodrow Wilson’s administration. For now, though, the Biden camp claims this narrative of control is a conspiracy theory. Communications director Elizabeth Alexander called Jill’s work “an act of service, rather than some mythical power grab invented by the dark corners of the internet.” If Jill is revealed to be playing a bigger role in the executive branch than she has let on, the media narrative will quickly shift to laud her for doing what had to be done to save democracy.
One can only imagine what would be said about Melania Trump, who never received a Vogue cover, had she and her husband found themselves in similar circumstances. As it is, Vogue and the rest of legacy media are perfectly happy to support Jill, no matter that she’s more cogent on the campaign trail than a husband who is only “dependably engaged” from 10 am. to 4 pm, according to Axios.
Jill Biden, who insists on being called “Dr” despite having neither an M.D. nor a Ph.D. (she has a Doctor of Education degree), will likely fight to the bitter end. The question Democrats should be asking themselves, then, is not how they can stop Joe Biden, but how they can stop Jill.
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SubscribeDr. Jill Biden talked to the President as if he was three years old.
I don’t think she realized how much she was humiliating him.
Well, if not, then so much for Dr Biden being the smartest one in the room . . .
Maybe that’s how she always talks to him, which is definitely pause for thought.
In the days since THAT debate, my ire about this insane situation has somehow attached itself largely to Mrs. Biden.
I don’t know how power hungry she is as a person or what she’s like at all. I get that being the wife of the most powerful man in the world is a pretty extraordinary position to be in and that there are a lot of scary powers that be hanging over their heads like the sword of Damocles.
BUT!
What kind of wife or partner allows their significant other to be parades around and used as a human puppet, exposed to global mockery, pity and all the rest? As a spouse or committed life partner, it is on YOU to sit your other half down, look them right in the face and tell them the truth, even if they don’t want to hear it. And if they aren’t up to making their own decisions, you have to act in their best interests. Isn’t that what you promise them when you say “I do?” Isn’t that the whole point?
I just don’t see how Jill is doing the best by either her husband or the country or the world with this.
It’s the most miserable and sickening show, on every level.
If I go ga-ga in my old age, I want my wife to wheel my half-baked corpse around, giving me praise and ice cream.
How much more fun than sitting in a nursing home with some old bitties who just want to play weekly bingo?
Who needs dignity?
Those with self-awareness?
What kind of partner does this? One who insists on being called Doctor for having a degree in education. I know real doctors who insist on being called by their first name only, for fear of alienating his friends.
She has a PhD in being a doctor!
I used to tell my students: there is an inverse relation between the quality of a school and its insistence on the doctoral title. Index: Podunk State University (until recently, P.S. College) has Dr. X on every office door. On the other hand if you take a course with Henry Kissinger, he is Mr. Kissinger, you are Mr. X or Ms. Y.
You saved me from writing the same thing. In the course of my working life (20+ years so far), I have encountered many many highly educated and titled people and can categorically confirm that the greater the insistence on the use of an academic title/the more references made to said title, the lower the intelligence of the title bearer and the greater their inferiority complex.
Truly clever people don’t need to advertise their brains.
That scene post debate is the most humiliating thing that can happen to someone in public.
Agree. Totally off-topic now but I have to thank you for teaching me the great Canadianism “gong show”. Have no idea of Canadian slang and that’s a gem, I’m stealing it!
I wholeheartedly agree with you. I am, however, wondering (completely uncritically) if your bewildered questions are rhetorical? The Good Dr. Jill advocates for societal norms that flatten and destroy the very values of Family you reference; values she must then certainly be totally void of?
Horrible woman.
Dr Jill Biden, Elder-Abuser-in-Chief, President-She.
Lady Macbeth meets Nurse Ratched.
Vogue cover star, married to the poster boy for Vague.
Love “Lady Macbeth meets Nurse Ratched “. So true …Up to now there was only another First Lady, who was pure “Lady Macbeth”. Thank God, she lost to Trump, but it seems a rival hit the desired glass ceiling behind the scene .
“You did very well: you answered all the questions” has already become a family joke in our household.
Yes, a rather low bar to achieve answering all the questions. Never mind the rambling and mendacious nature of the answers – he actually managed to give answers. I suppose he is used to being patronised like this at home as he seemed unoffended by being spoken to like a slow 12 year old.
No one should talk to a 12 year old like that.
Good job! (As they say in special ed.)
Joe has been exploiting his family for its entire existence for economic, political, psychological benefit, so its no surprise they do that exact same thing to him, especially in his current state. Thats how toxic families often work, they manipulate, exploit and abuse one another for their personal benefit. A good example was the car accident that killed his first wife and older son, he accused the truck driver for causing the accident of being drunk, despite the fact that it was not true to make himself look more sympathetic, and used the fact that hunter was still in the hospital recovering from his injuries to have a swearing in ceremony for the senate in his hospital room to for the sake of publicity. The family is full of sociopaths and narcissists, they want him to still be president because it benefits their own personal interests.
Joe and Jill went up the hill,
to fetch a pail of water.
Joe fell down and broke his crown,
And Jill said “No he didn’t”.
And Jill said “No he didn’t, he answered all the questions, and he knew all the facts!!”
Uproarious, well done
Jill Biden has received three covers on Vogue, while actual model Melania Trump never received even one.
It’s fascinating to see the small, tiny, in a sense insignificant, ways, that the media’s Trump derangement syndrome expressed itself. Melania probably did more to keep a polite ideological distance from her husband than any First Lady ever has. No matter… no cover for you!
For real. She was an exceptional First Lady.
Nothing to do with Jill Biden’s craving for power. Far more to do with the fact that the people who decide who runs have told her – insisted, I suspect – that he must run again. Why do they want this? Because he’s a puppet president and others may not be so compliant. Their leverage over the Bidens? Likely it’s Kompromat that’s bad enough for Jill Biden to push for him to stay in the race.
This is a pretty fact-free piece. Wild unsupported speculation isn’t news, it horsesh*t.
What are the missing facts? There is a host of links and quotes that support the thesis. Jill DID treat her husband like a three-year-old on a public stage the next day. She did the talking on that stage, not him. He IS in cognitive decline. The media spent four years trying to whitewash that until the debate made doing so impossible, though the true believers still try: “he had a cold,” “he stutters,” and even Joe tried blaming it on jet lag despite spending a week in seclusion prepping for the debate.
Facts don’t matter to the deluded.
This response is wholly dedicated to defending a resource that is much maligned in metaphor: horse shit.
Horse manure is incredibly good stuff. Spread on vegetable beds, it is like rocket fuel, and is less acidic than chicken shit, for crops sensitive to PH balance. And because it is less liquid that cow manure, it is easier to transport via wheelbarrow from stalls to the veg garden.
Wild unsupported speculation, on the other hand, has no known value to hobby gardeners like myself.
Are people only now figuring out that this woman is Edith Wilson 2.0? Joe Biden’s cognitive slide was a topic during his 2020 basement campaign, too, but no one wanted to talk about it. The Dem leadership ushered aside far more lucid people, none of who had used their child as a bagman to sell influence to foreign entities, in favor of this man. His capacity, or lack thereof, has been on ample display for the last four years.
Last week only made it impossible to pretend it was something else, though the true believers tried, alternatively blaming a cold or laryngitis or his alleged stutter. Joe himself attributed the debate performance to jet lag as if no one would notice that he spent the week prior in virtual seclusion “preparing.”
The one mistake that is made is attributing Joe’s mental state to dementia. I’ve seen that up close. No way such a person can function in a public setting for four years. Joe has something; that’s not in dispute but it’s not clear exactly what that is. Meanwhile, Jill loves the trappings, the power, and the title of First Lady. She’s not giving that up and she will abuse this man to no end in that pursuit.
If Jill is revealed to be playing a bigger role in the executive branch than she has let on, the media narrative will quickly shift to laud her for doing what had to be done to save democracy.
The best way to save democracy is to shift power into the hands of a non-democratically elected family member.
Shhhh. She’s secretly working for the Republican Party. Don’t let on.
Oops, Hillary (oops, Kamala): too late to break the glass ceiling. America has already had its first female president. (Perhaps, long ago.)
Mmes Biden and Clinton – the Lady Macbeths of US politics. What a pair of besoms.
Everyone calm down:
Biden wants to ensure the Democratic Party makes a decision in November regardless of who wins. If he loses, they can change the rules. If he wins, he can then resign to allow Harris to take the helm with less headache from the campaign.
You do not need to believe me or anyone else; just use critical thinking. There is no benefit for Biden to leave now… absolutely no benefit for him or his party, and no one cares about the country anymore.
We are all parading to dictatorships in the west, just accept. It is less painful that way!