WASHINGTON POST: What Jill Biden’s memoir says about Melania, the East Wing and that debate

The title of Jill Biden’s memoir, View From The East Wing, is already a historical relic. There is no view from the East Wing now, of course, because the structure has been reduced to rubble to make way for President Donald Trump’s ballroom. And much of what Mrs Biden discusses in her memoir of her time as first lady could be interpreted as an excavation, too.

Those hoping that the memoir, released Tuesday, would provide a detailed reckoning of the Biden family’s time in the White House are setting themselves up for disappointment: The former first lady defends her husband’s decision to run for reelection and his capabilities as president. She would move heaven and earth for him.

Some Democrats are unhappy about her decision to dredge up the 2024 campaign.

“We have a lot of momentum in our favor … and when we get pulled back into conversations about age and the election in ‘24, it’s never gonna be a good place for Democrats,” Meghan Hays, a former White House aide to Joe Biden, said on C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire.” “I think it is a tough place to be.”

Jill writes that when her husband was president, “I think he and I both erred on the side of silence, dignity, and letting news cycles run their course.”

So, now, she’s ready to talk. And here’s what she has to say.

On the White House renovations

True to the book’s title, Mrs Biden describes the view from the East Wing in rich detail: the paintings on her office walls, the books and tchotchkes in the shelves, the views of the gardens.

When she learns of its destruction, her grief is immense.

“The innards of the East Wing were spread out for everyone to see,” she writes, poetically, of the destruction of her former space in the White House, “like a rare and precious animal that had been hunted down and killed”.

On her predecessor and successor, Melania Trump

Jill details only a few interactions with Melania Trump. After the attempt on Donald Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, during the 2024 campaign, Mrs Biden says that she called Mrs Trump to say she was thinking of her and Barron, the youngest Trump child, and that Mrs Trump was “polite and controlled as ever”.

Mrs Biden also describes an awkward motorcade ride with Mrs Trump on the day of Donald Trump’s second inauguration. When asked by fellow motorcade guest John Bessler, Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s husband, about Barron’s time at New York University, “Melania kept trying to switch the topic to the weather,” she writes.

Perhaps unsurprising, but Mrs Trump also snubbed Mrs Biden’s invitation to the ceremonial inauguration tea.

On President Biden’s disastrous debate performance and cognitive abilities

Mrs Biden writes that her husband told her he wasn’t feeling well the day of the 2024 presidential debate and that, even after his makeup was done, “he looked like he was made of clay, strangely monochromatic”.

When he said his line about beating Medicare, “Is he short circuiting? I thought,” she writes. “Is this a stroke? … Has he been drugged?”

“To this day, I still don’t know what happened,” she writes, wondering whether he had taken some codeine cough syrup for his illness. “I wish I’d thought of asking for a blood test.”

While Mrs Biden addressed a post-debate crowd with her husband and offered him reassurance — “You answered every question. You knew all the facts,” she said — she now acknowledges that her comments “sounded a little too disconnected from what people saw”.

When stories alleging that President Biden’s inner circle had concealed details of his cognitive decline began to circulate, she said, “It was so absurd that I couldn’t imagine ever having to dignify it with a response. I never guessed that theory would take on a life of its own.”

On President Biden running for re-election

It is not until Chapter 23 that the author begins to speak about her husband’s decision to seek a second term.

“Every one of his senior advisers insisted he needed to run,” she writes.

“Even if he had slowed down in the years before his reelection bid, I believed in my heart that he was still good enough and wise enough and capable enough to govern.”

She writes that when people surrounding President Biden couldn’t initially persuade him to quit in the aftermath of the debate, they began to lobby her. When he finally made the decision to exit the race, she asked him how he was feeling about it.

“He appeared strong and resigned. He took my hand and said, ‘Jilly, I had no choice.’”

On President Biden’s prostate cancer diagnosis

The former president’s post-White House diagnosis of Stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer came as a “surprise” to her even though she detailed her observations of his symptoms, which included waking up frequently in the night.

Mrs Biden was the one who alerted his doctors without speaking to him directly, which she acknowledged “surely sounds old-fashioned,” but: “It’s always been the nature of our relationship that we’ve maintained a veil of discretion around personal health,” including her menopause symptoms.

Though questions remain about how a diagnosis such as this could have been missed by White House physicians, she writes: “I didn’t want to waste too much energy looking back and asking how this could have happened. We had no time to lose.”

The former president’s medication regime has caused side effects, including “fatigue and moodiness.”

On Hunter Biden’s trial

Mrs Biden devotes one chapter to Hunter Biden’s trial, describing what it was like to go back and forth between her stepson in court and her husband in France for D-Day anniversary memorials.

She writes of “willing myself to appear as much like a robot as possible.”

She says that her husband’s attempts to remain neutral and let the process play out had backfired: “In working so hard to be impartial, we guaranteed that Hunter would meet the worst possible legal fate.”

On getting a cat

When President Biden first met Willow, the Bidens’ adopted cat, he said, “That cat thinks she’s a dog!” she describes the cat’s “puppy-like confidence” at the White House.

Notably, Mrs Biden does not mention the family’s German shepherd dogs, which had bitten Secret Service agents several times during their White House residency. (And, on the topic of dogs, they came up during that awkward motorcade ride with Mrs Trump, when Bessler asked Mrs Trump about pets: “I asked Barron several times, but he said no, he didn’t want a dog,” she replied.)

On fashion

Though reporters often scrutinise the fashion choices of first ladies and what those choices communicate, Jill writes of being unnerved by this commentary, which could go too far.

When she wore patterned tights, she was accused of “dressing too provocatively. To me, they were just pretty lace stockings.”

A scrunchie worn on a different day “resulted in a deluge of commentary”. But she also describes some of her favourite outfits worn for official events and name-drops designers and labels, including Christian Siriano, Schiaparelli, Oscar de la Renta and Ralph Lauren.

On Hillary Clinton

Mrs Biden writes of her deep gratitude to the Clintons, who “stuck with us through the entirety of the hard summer” of 2024. Hillary Clinton, she writes, is “one of the greatest politicians of our time, as well as a singularly kind person”.

On President Trump

Mrs Biden expressed her distaste for Donald Trump’s use of an image of them in conversation to market his new $US199 ($277) cologne, with the tagline, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist”. “Really?” she writes.

But otherwise she rarely refers to Donald Trump, and when she does, she uses the term “Joe’s opponent,” or “the incoming president,” rather than his name. Recalling her last night in the White House residence, she writes that she felt “anxious for what the next day would bring, as the president-elect prepared to return like some kind of avenging spirit”.

On what’s next

The first few days of what she refers to as “the afterlife” were difficult, she writes. Now, “Everywhere I go — the gym, the grocery store, the beach — I am stopped by people telling me horror stories” about their lives under the Trump administration, she says.

She is trying, she writes, to see this phase as “one more life stage, like having a new baby or becoming an empty nester”. She has taken up mahjong.

Mrs Biden closes with these words: “We are blessed”.

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