Former President Joe Biden briefly stole the spotlight from his wife, former first lady Jill Biden, during a stop on her book tour this week, using an awkward audience interaction to plug his own forthcoming book.
Jill Biden was wrapping up an interview about her newly released memoir, A View from the East Wing, with moderator Whoopi Goldberg in New York City when Biden unexpectedly left his seat in the audience and walked to the edge of the stage.
“I have a question,” Biden said. “Who do you love most in the whole world?” he asked his wife.
“Whoopi,” Jill Biden replied, prompting laughter from the crowd.
Joe Biden remained standing as Goldberg attempted to move on, prompting the former first lady to relent.
“I love you most, Joe. Was that it? Was that the answer he wanted?” she joked.
As the event wrapped up, Biden interrupted again to promote his own forthcoming book.
“My book, which comes out in September — read it,” Biden said after a staffer handed him a microphone.
“Do I have to remind him that this is my event?” Jill Biden quipped.
“The only thing Jill does better than write, she’s a beautiful woman,” Biden replied before the event concluded.
The episode comes as some Democrats argue the former president and first lady’s post-White House media appearances are reopening politically damaging debates about Biden’s age and the party’s 2024 election loss.
“I think that they need to sell books, and I think that Dr. Biden wants her story out there,” Meghan Hays, a former White House special assistant to Biden who left before the 2024 reelection campaign, said on C-SPAN’s Ceasefire.
But Hays warned that many Democrats would prefer to move on.
“It is not welcome from Democrats,” she said. “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. I think it’s a tough place to be.”
THE DEMOCRATIC MESS IN MAINE
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) echoed that frustration while speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington.
“We don’t need to be distracted by what the DNC says about the autopsy.” Grisham said, “I don’t need to be distracted about anyone’s book. “What I need to do is to focus on making a difference in the lives of people. And that’s what I think they’re getting really frustrated about, is all this nonsense. I don’t think the average Democratic voter, honestly, particularly in New Mexico, gives a damn about that book or the debate anymore.”
