Jill Biden sparked fresh controversy after seeming to contradict remarks made by those behind the scenes of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ ill-fated 2024 run for the White House, RadarOnline.com can reveal.
The former first lady, 74, said she truly believed that Harris, 61, would come out victorious over Donald Trump.
“[On] election night, I was certain she was going to win,” former President Joe Biden’s wife told CBS Sunday Morning‘s Rita Braver in an interview that aired on May 31.
“The excitement for her and the crowds and, I mean, how people rallied around her, and I truly felt that she was going to win,” Jill continued.
The longtime educator apparently wasn’t in touch with Harris’ own team, as senior campaign adviser David Plouffe confessed in late November 2024 that internal polling never showed the veep coming out ahead.
“We were behind. I mean, I think it surprised people because there were these public polls that came out in late September, early October, showing us with leads that we never saw,” he revealed on the Pod Save America podcast.
“I was shocked she didn’t win, because I think she would be a good president,” Jill said of Harris during her CBS sit-down. “I just, I couldn’t believe that she had lost.”
The former White House resident said she went “all out” campaigning for Harris after Joe bowed out of the race for a second term in July 2024 amid mounting calls that he would be unable to win after his disastrous debate performance against Trump the month prior, which led to questions about his cognitive ability and mental fortitude.
“I was out on the trail, I think, every single day. I traveled the entire country,” Jill professed about campaigning for Harris.
The two women reportedly had a frosty relationship ever since the 2020 election. Harris went after Joe during the primary season over his opposition of federally mandated busing to end segregation while he was a young U.S. senator in the 1970s.
During a June 2019 debate, Harris told Joe, “I do not believe you are a racist,” but raked him over the coals for working with two other senators to oppose busing.
“And you know, 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. And that little girl was me,” Harris scolded Joe.
“With what he cares about, what he fights for, what he’s committed to, you get up there and call him a racist without basis?” Jill told supporters on a conference call about Harris’ debate comments, scoffing. “Go f— yourself.”
That resulted in Jill developing a bitterness towards Harris, even reportedly griping about her husband choosing the California senator as his running mate, “There are millions of people in the United States. Why do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe?”
The possible 2028 presidential hopeful wrote in her 2025 memoir, 107 Days, about the lack of support she felt she received from the Bidens’ inner circle while running in 2024.
“And when the stories were unfair or inaccurate, the president’s inner circle seemed fine with it… It seemed as if they decided I should be knocked down a little bit more,” Harris claimed.
She also alleged the president’s decision to stay in the race after the debate was due to Jill’s backing, before he finally bowed out on July 21, 2024.
“It’s Joe and Jill’s decision. We all said that, like a mantra, as if we’d all been hypnotized. Was it grace, or was it recklessness? In retrospect, I think it was recklessness,” she added.