Joe and Jill Biden fire back on 'The View' against accusations of health cover-up, call stories 'wrong'

Former President Joe Biden and former First Lady Jill Biden fired back on "The View" Thursday against stories about his mental decline behind the scenes at the White House, with Jill Biden cutting in at one point as the ex-president trailed off while defending his record.

Asked by co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin about Democratic sources in new books who said there was a "dramatic decline" in the president's cognitive abilities toward the end of his term, Joe Biden flatly said they were incorrect before segueing into criticism of the prior Trump administration.

"They are wrong," he said. "There’s nothing to sustain that, number one. Number two, you know, think of what we left with. We left with a circumstance where we had an insurrection when I started, not since the Civil War. We had a circumstance where we were in a position that we – well, the pandemic, because of the incompetence of the last outfit, end up over a million people dying, a million people dying. And we’re also in a situation where we found ourselves unable to deal with a lot of just basic issues, which I won’t go into in the interest of time. And so we went to work, and we got it done and, you know, one of the things that – well, I’m –"

That's when his wife jumped in.

Joe and Jill Biden appear on "The View" on May 8, 2025. (ABC / Screenshot)

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"Alyssa, one of the things I think is that the people who wrote those books were not in the White House with us," Jill Biden said. "And they didn’t see how hard Joe worked every single day. I mean, he’d get up. He’d put in a full day, and then at night he would – I’d be in bed, you know, reading my book, and he was still on the phone, reading his briefings. Working with staff. I mean, it was nonstop."

She praised her husband for working hard and said, based on the state of things now under President Donald Trump, "give me Joe Biden any time," leading to loud applause from the audience.

Griffin also pressed Biden about his dramatic departure from the 2024 race under pressure from fellow Democrats like Nancy Pelosi. Biden said he exited because he didn't want a divided Democratic Party, while again insisting during the show he could have beaten Trump.

"I thought it was better to put the country ahead of my interests, my personal interests. I’m not being facetious. I’m being deadly earnest about that," he said. "And I think that we still – let me put it this way. I had six more months. Did a pretty good job in six months."

Joe Biden reacts after his wife Jill Biden defended his record on "The View." (Screenshot/ABC)

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He acknowledged concerns about his age – he would have been 86 at the end of a second term and was already the oldest American president in history – but said he got plenty done when "I supposedly lost my cognitive capability."

Co-host Whoopi Goldberg, a fervent Biden supporter, suggested that his poor showing at the debate last year started the whole concern over his fitness for office. 

"Why do you think people bought into it, especially the Democrats?" Goldberg asked.

Biden said he hadn't lost many debates but acknowledged he had a "bad night" while also saying he was sick that evening. His wife said he admitted it to her afterward – and he used a colorful term for "screwed up" – but she didn't want those 90 minutes to define his presidency.

"We all saw it, it was terrible," she said of her husband's debate performance.

In actuality, Republicans and some Democrats had been raising concerns before the debate for years and especially throughout 2024 about his mental fitness, through such moments as the Robert Hur report that mentioned his failing memory, a bombshell Wall Street Journal story about behind-the-scenes concerns, and various viral videos of Biden appearing to freeze up or seem confused that the White House dismissed as "cheap fakes."

However, the debate's fallout was unmistakable. Although Biden held on at first, he succumbed to party pressure and exited the contest on July 21, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris, who went on to lose the general election to Trump.

Former First Lady Jill Biden on "The View." (Screenshot/ABC)

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Co-host Sara Haines put heat on Jill Biden over concerns she may have been too close to the situation to impartially gauge whether her husband could handle a second term.

"I was with Joe day and night," she said. "I saw him more than any other person … I did not create a cocoon around him. I mean, you saw him in the Oval Office. You saw him making speeches. He wasn’t hiding somewhere. I didn’t have him, you know, sequestered in some place."

Asked about the idea she was a "Lady MacBeth," a reference to the scheming Shakespeare character who wields nefarious influence behind the scenes, she responded that such rhetoric was "very hurtful, especially from some of our so-called friends."

Jill Biden has previously said she was disappointed in Pelosi's role in pushing her husband out of the race.

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"We were friends for 50 years," she told the Washington Post. "It was disappointing."