You'll never guess what TV network Joe Biden watched. Ask Jill.
You'll never guess what TV network Joe Biden watched. Ask Jill.
Susan Page, USA TODAYSat, May 30, 2026 at 7:00 AM UTC
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Donald Trump had repeatedly denounced Joe Biden as the worst president in American history, calling him "dumb" and "demented" during one of the nation's most bitter campaigns for the White House.
Yet in her new book, "View from the East Wing," former first lady Jill Biden describes an oddly friendly farewell from the 47th president at the 2025 inauguration moments after he had been sworn in to succeed her husband.
"After it was over and official, the new president said to me, 'If Joe ever needs anything, call me!'"
To be clear: That seemed unlikely.
Jill Biden speaks prior to Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden speaking during a Drive-In Rally at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, Pa. on Nov. 2, 2020.
Much of the early coverage of Jill Biden's memoir, being published June 2 by Gallery Books, has focused on her chilling account of watching her husband falter in the presidential debate against Trump. Joe Biden's catastrophic performance fueled questions about his mental acuity and led, three weeks later, to his reluctant withdrawal as the Democratic candidate.
But there are other insights and nuggets in her 275-page book. Among the takeaways:
Cue the awkward small talk
There had been no discordant bonhomie in the ride to the Capitol that day, on Jan. 20, 2025.
As custom dictated, the outgoing and incoming first ladies shared an official car as they rode from the White House to the Inauguration.
Jill Biden and Melania Trump had rarely spoken in the past. Melania hadn't invited her successor to the traditional tea at the White House during the transition after the 2020 election. When Jill did extend that invitation after the 2024 election, Melania declined.
Fortunately, Jill Biden writes, their formal escort to the Inauguration was John Bessent, a law professor and the husband of Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who chaired the bipartisan committee that planned the event.
He seemed to have arrived with a long mental list of safe topics, a blind-date strategy of generations.
He "must have drawn the shortest of all possible straws" for what was sure to be a tricky assignment, Jill Biden writes. "My impression was that Amy ... had told him to put some pep in his step when he rode with us."
"Where's Barron in school?" he began, as Melania gazed out the window and responded with short answers. Bessent was undeterred. Where did Barron live? Was he having fun? Did he have a lot of friends? Did they have a dog? Where did she grow up in Slovenia?
Then the two-mile journey was over. It may have seemed longer than that.
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You'll never guess what TV network Biden watched
As Joe Biden resisted calls for him to withdraw from the presidential race, there was speculation that he was being shielded from bad news.
That wasn't accurate, his wife says.
"Joe was obsessed with his iPhone and the Apple News feed, and his algorithm was selecting the worst of the worst," she writes. "He was constantly watching Fox."
There was no "bubble of delusional optimism," as critics charged, she said. "He was being deluged with news every day; nearly all of it was bad."
Nursing a grudge with Kamala Harris
Kamala Harris, a rival for the Democratic presidential nomination who became Joe Biden's running mate, comes in for some surprisingly critical commentary in the book.
Jill Biden relates the 2019 primary debate in which Harris got headlines for challenging Biden for his vote four decades earlier on using busing to desegregate schools.
"View from the East Wing" by Jill Biden
"There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day," Harris had declared. "That little girl was me."
The implication, Jill Biden writes, was that he was a racist. "Hypocritical point-scoring," she called it, and a "'gotcha' moment."
"The thought bubble above my head was full of expletives," she recalls.
About that view from the East Wing
Nine months after Jill Biden moved out of the White House, construction crews tore down the East Wing. The two-story structure was reduced to rubble to make way for Trump's "big, beautiful ballroom," festooned with gold.
She recounted the history of the architectural elements that were lost, including some put in place by Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt and FDR.
Former President Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden leave the U.S. Capitol after the inauguration of President Donald Trump's second term on Jan. 20, 2025.
"The social offices, gutted. The military office, flattened. What had been my office, gone," she says. "A major landmark and historic treasure was being treated like an extreme fixer-upper on HGTV's Property Brothers."
After four years in the White House, she laments, the loss felt personal.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jill Biden book dishes Kamala criticism, shares Joe's go-to TV channel
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
