'Has He Been Drugged?'

Jill Biden recounts watching President Biden struggle during a June 2024 debate and wondering whether he was having a medical episode, short-circuiting, or being drugged. She also worries that viewers might assume he is incoherent all the time and that her role as his closest confidant could be interpreted as complicity. She writes to dispel bipartisan accusations that she concealed his aging and cognitive decline and encouraged him to remain in power longer than his condition allowed. As the person who saw him even when staff was not present, she has faced extensive conspiracy theories portraying her as central to a cover-up. A spokesperson declined to comment.

"“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?”"

"“Oh God-will people watching assume this is how he is all the time?” she writes in her new memoir, View From the East Wing, a copy of which The Atlantic obtained ahead of its June 2 release date."

"Part of Jill Biden's goal for writing a book about her four years as first lady, it seems, is to dispel bipartisan accusations that she was a hidden hand covering up her aging husband's cognitive decline and nudging him to cling to power longer than his mind and body could sustain."

"As his closest confidant and the person who saw him even when his staff was not around, the former first lady has faced a deluge of conspiracy theories that place her at the center of what critics describe as a grand cover-up. A spokesperson for the Bidens declined to comment."

Read at The Atlantic