In August 2021, Kabul was collapsing. As Taliban forces advanced on the Afghan capital following President Joe Biden’s chaotic US troop withdrawal, frantic efforts were underway to help Afghans who had worked alongside American forces escape the country.
Former US first ladies also sprang into action. Both Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush had long backed women’s rights in Afghanistan, a cause that had broad bipartisan support and seemed impossible to ignore as the crisis deepened.
Yet while reports circulated that “kill lists” targeting Afghan women activists were being drawn up, one emergency call at the White House allegedly focused on a different concern: protecting First Lady Jill Biden from potential political fallout.
“Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush mobilized their usual networks to mount independent missions to evacuate Afghan women,” author Azadeh Moaveni writes in her new book. “But while Hillary and Laura were hard at work, Jill Biden appeared to have gone missing.”
The episode is recounted in The East Wing: Power, Intrigue, and the Untold Story of America’s First Ladies. In the book, Moaveni examines Jill Biden’s time as first lady, from its hopeful beginnings to what she describes as an alleged Lady Macbeth-like effort to keep her ailing husband in power as he sought re-election.
When Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, the outlook initially appeared promising. He inherited a country battered by the Covid-19 pandemic, economically strained and politically exhausted after the tumultuous Trump presidency.
Schools and families were struggling to resume ordinary life. Jill Biden, herself a teacher, was one of the administration’s few public figures who connected naturally with mothers and educators, Moaveni writes. She also brought years of political experience, having stood beside her husband during his Senate career and later served as second lady while he was vice president to Barack Obama.
But Moaveni argues that early warning signs suggested Jill’s loyalties lay less with the wider American public than with the husband she married at 26 and the family that had endured years of personal upheaval and tragedy.
A new book follows Jill Biden’s journey as first lady, from a hopeful beginning to an alleged Lady Macbeth-like role in her husband’s political career
Moaveni claims Jill’s earliest loyalties appeared to be directed toward her husband rather than the American public
Jill Biden entered the White House with extensive political experience from Joe Biden’s Senate and vice-presidential years
During Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, Jill visited the squalid Matamoros migrant camp just across the US border in Mexico. She later wrote an emotional Wall Street Journal opinion piece asking, “Is this what we have become?” in Trump’s America.
But within months of Biden taking office, as the politically sensitive issue of migration at the southern border began to hurt the administration with voters, she quietly stepped away from an initiative aimed at reuniting migrant families. According to The East Wing, that became a pattern throughout her husband’s presidency.
“Most First Ladies were like this to a degree. But Jill was singular in the way she subsumed herself into Joe’s presidency,” Moaveni writes.
“She supported only causes that made him look good and abandoned them the moment they didn’t. Any subject that proved awkward to the Biden administration she would generally avoid, even when it related directly to her brand as an educator and an advocate for women.”
The fall of Kabul offered what Moaveni presents as a telling example. Jill was associated with Joining Forces, an initiative supporting military families, but as the Afghanistan evacuation unfolded, her staff allegedly focused instead on stopping “all activities that might expose the First Lady to public anger.”
“They had a huge fear of doing anything at bases, they were just petrified,” a former staff member told Moaveni. “Even though this was when military communities needed support.”
A day after a suicide bombing at Kabul airport killed 13 US service members and more than 170 Afghan civilians, Jill issued a statement mourning the deaths. “My heart is with you as you navigate what comes next,” she told military families.
At the time, she did not address the political consequences of the withdrawal. In her recent biography, View From The East Wing, however, Jill acknowledged that the fall of Kabul became a “turning point for Joe’s administration.”
Moaveni traces Jill’s fierce loyalty to the beginning of her marriage. When she married Joe Biden in 1977, she joined a family still grieving the deaths of his first wife, Neilia, and their 13-month-old daughter, Naomi, who were killed in a car crash five years earlier.
Their sons, Hunter and Beau, survived. Jill then faced the difficult responsibility of becoming “both stepmother and substitute mother,” caring for the boys while Joe commuted to Washington to pursue his political career.
Jill and Joe’s daughter, Ashley, was born in 1981. But the family’s turmoil continued into the children’s adult lives. Beau died from brain cancer in 2015, while both Hunter and Ashley struggled with addiction. Hunter’s highly publicized crises repeatedly created fresh difficulties for the Biden family.
Moaveni writes that Jill became “both stepmother and substitute mother” to Hunter and Beau Biden, who died in 2015
Jill and Joe Biden welcomed their daughter Ashley in 1981, but the family’s personal struggles continued into adulthood
Hunter and Ashley Biden both battled addiction, while Hunter’s public crises brought repeated pressure on the family
The book also examines Joe and Jill Biden’s initial refusal to publicly acknowledge Navy Roberts, the granddaughter Hunter Biden fathered between his marriages. They only addressed her publicly after a sharply critical 2023 New York Times article.
Writing in the newspaper, Maureen Dowd argued that the Bidens’ reluctance to embrace the child publicly “reveals is how dated and inauthentic the 80-year-old president’s view of family is.”
Several weeks later, Joe Biden issued a statement saying he and Jill wanted the best for all their grandchildren, “including Navy,” while insisting that the matter was “not a political issue, it’s a family matter.” Jill’s recent biography is dedicated to her daughter and granddaughters, but does not list Navy among them.
The dispute underscored the complexity of the Biden family’s private life.
“Both Bidens were carrying out their roles while parenting adult children on the brink – of relapse into addiction, of legal and financial ruin,” Moaveni writes.
The family’s determination to protect its privacy also shaped several political decisions, including the appointment of Anthony Bernal as Jill’s senior adviser. Bernal became a powerful gatekeeper, described variously as Jill’s “work husband” and the Biden family’s “marriage counsellor.”
His defining quality, according to the book, was his unwavering loyalty to the Biden family, particularly Jill.
“He never stopped wanting to hold her purse,” one insider told Moaveni. “I think he would crawl into the coffin with her.”
Moaveni writes that Jill’s role as first lady was largely to serve as Joe’s chief messenger, an arrangement that suited Bernal. Her public work stayed within familiar territory, while Bernal became the principal defender of the Bidens’ privacy and, in the book’s account, the most powerful staff member in the East Wing.
By surrounding herself with longtime loyalists and established “Biden people” rather than new or unconventional voices, Jill also acquired what the book calls “an aura of blandness.” Moaveni writes that her team consisted of capable veterans, but not the “brilliant policy minds, politicos and PR A-listers” Michelle Obama had recruited.
The result, the book argues, was an unremarkable tenure in which initiatives such as the migrant family reunification effort and plans to fund community colleges were promoted before being quietly abandoned.
“Jill’s approach to being First Lady was to act as Joe’s lead messenger,” Moaveni writes
Moaveni links Jill’s focus on protecting her family’s privacy to the appointment of senior adviser Anthony Bernal as a powerful gatekeeper
Moaveni writes that Jill backed causes that benefited Joe Biden politically and abandoned them when they became liabilities
Projects including the migration initiative and community college funding were championed before later being dropped, the book claims
Her proposal for free community college education collapsed after being removed from a wider spending bill. Jill said she was “disappointed,” but one insider told Moaveni: “I didn’t get the sense that she was on fire about it.”
“Over the course of four years, her First Ladyship unfolded as exceedingly narrow, even conservative,” Moaveni writes.
“She never pursued a distinct project through which the public could get a sense of her – of her personality, what she cared about and the texture of her beliefs and commitments. She stood steadfastly by her man and squeezed herself into such a narrow, Joe-centric persona that public opinion about the two of them essentially merged.”
That dynamic was tested when Joe Biden’s health began to decline as he sought a second term. Jill was then in a position to intervene and potentially prevent an impending electoral crisis for the Democratic Party.
Former White House staff members began voicing concerns in March 2024. Those worries intensified in the run-up to the now-infamous June 27 debate between Biden and Donald Trump.
The East Wing says Jill was preoccupied in early June with Hunter Biden’s firearms trial and a series of official engagements. Joe Biden had also developed a cold and appeared “almost catatonic” to some major donors. He reportedly failed to recognize actor George Clooney, who later described the incident in a strongly worded opinion article.
After Biden’s halting, disorganized debate performance exposed concerns about his age and fitness, critics began asking whether Jill should have intervened sooner.
“Many senior Democrats blamed her, along with the rest of the family and his close aides, for hiding his condition,” Moaveni writes.
“Surely she had known how diminished he was, and if she knew, why had she not persuaded him to step down… as First Lady, she was the most intimate, public face of the campaign persuading Americans that he was fit to serve another term.”
Jill publicly praised her husband’s performance, saying he had done “such a great job.” In her recent biography, however, she says she was privately alarmed and feared he might be suffering a stroke during the debate.
“It felt like we were watching an AI hologram of the man we knew, and the hologram was glitching,” she writes.
Jill praised Joe Biden’s 2024 debate performance, saying he had done “such a great job”
She later acknowledged that she had privately been deeply worried about her husband during the debate
Even as the debate drew harsh reviews, Jill maintained a confident public image. Four days later, she appeared on the cover of Vogue wearing a Ralph Lauren tuxedo dress beneath the headline, “We Will Decide Our Future.”
“The headline alluded to the rollback around women’s rights, but landing four days after the debate, it appeared to convey that Jill was the key figure, along with Joe himself, in deciding the country’s future,” the book states.
The Vogue feature had been arranged months earlier, but its publication so soon after the debate strengthened portrayals of Jill as a “Lady Macbeth” figure—someone allegedly so invested in proximity to power that she concealed her husband’s age-related decline.
Even some of her political allies have repeated the comparison. Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, called Jill “Lady McBiden” in 2025.
During an appearance on The View last year, Jill said such remarks were “very hurtful.” She also denied having her husband “sequestered in some place” to conceal any cognitive decline.
Our News Outlet has contacted Joe and Jill Biden for comment.
Joe Biden ultimately withdrew as the Democratic presidential candidate at the end of July 2024, clearing the way for Kamala Harris. Donald Trump went on to win decisively in the election later that year, leaving Jill Biden with a limited political legacy, according to Moaveni’s account.
In her biography, Jill acknowledges that failing to confront concerns about Biden’s health created further questions. She nevertheless defends her record as first lady and describes the difficult balance the role demanded.
“Being First Lady could feel like a catch-22,” she writes. “You were encouraged to use your platform to do good, but not to be too aggressive in pursuing policy goals, lest you be seen as overreaching. If you knew too little about what you were talking about, then you were an embarrassment. If you knew too much, you were trying to rule the world.”
