OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
First Lady Jill Biden’s foray into humor over the weekend did not appear to go well during an event over the weekend.
While speaking at the National Governors Association, Biden, who is a teacher, began her speech with an anecdote about vocational training but didn’t quite pull off the joke.
“As many of you know, I’ve been teaching writing for 40 years,” she said. “So one day, a student named Harry, who wanted to be an auto mechanic, raised his hand. ‘Dr. B.,’ he said, ‘The only thing I need to learn how to write is, ‘NEEDS BRAKES.’”
Some members of the audience finally managed some chuckles, but it was after she began speaking again.
“Well, you finally got it! Come on! Wake up!” she said in response.
Jill Biden let her husband and his aides have it after she felt they allowed a 2022 press conference to go on too long and demanded to know why someone did not end it sooner.
In her upcoming book “American Woman,” which explores modern first ladies, author Katie Rogers reveals that Jill Biden confronted President Biden and his aides following the Jan. 19, 2022, news conference commemorating his first year in office. During the nearly two-hour conference, Biden discussed various issues but occasionally stumbled over facts and reacted strongly to a reporter who cited his remarks comparing political adversaries to segregationists, Fox News reported.
“She had watched the news conference, and the look on her face told everyone in the room — from the president on down — that they had some explaining to do,” Rogers wrote in the excerpt reported by Axios. “‘Why didn’t anyone stop that?’ she demanded.”
Also, according to the book, Jill asked: “Where were you guys? Where was the person who was going to end the press conference?”
Rogers wrote that the first lady’s hostile reaction even cowered her husband into silence.
“Everyone stayed silent, looking at one another, and then at her, and back to one another. That included the most powerful man in the world. Her husband essentially played along, not offering an answer, even though aides had slipped him a card suggesting he end the press conference,” Rogers wrote.
Rogers added in The New York Times that officials “later apologized to her, according to an account of the episode shared by a person in the room.”
The book depicts Jill Biden as her husband’s “fiercest protector” and goes on to suggest that she wants to help protect him from difficult situations. Rogers added that the first lady knows “how much the job is draining him,” noting further that he brings briefing books back to the first family residence every evening.
Details in the book come at a challenging time for the White House, which has been grappling with concerns about the president’s advanced age. Biden recently delivered a rare nationally televised primetime speech and press conference on Thursday night in response to alleged significant memory lapses during his interview for a special counsel report regarding his handling of classified documents.
The press conference, which did not go well, followed the release of Counsel Robert Hur’s damning report regarding Joe Biden’s mishandling of classified information. Hur’s 388-page report, which took the White House by surprise and sent shockwaves through the administration, documented Biden’s memory loss dating back nearly a decade, which clearly puts him in 25th Amendment territory.
“Mr. Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Hur wrote in explaining his rationale for refusing prosecution. “…It would be difficult to convince a jury they should convict him – by then a former president who will be at least well into his eighties – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”
