First lady Jill Biden abruptly cut off Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro when he raised concerns about the state of her husband’s re-election campaign, according to a bombshell new book about the attempt to cover up former President Joe Biden’s decline while in office.
The Bidens met with Shapiro for a private conversation in Harrisburg on July 7, 2024, days after the incumbent’s catastrophic debate performance against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to the account in “Original Sin,” co-authored by Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper.
At one point, Biden asked Shapiro “How do you think it’s going out there?” in reference to the campaign. In response, Thompson and Tapper wrote, the governor “decided to give it to him straight.”
“I’ll be honest, Mr. President, I have some concerns,” Shapiro said, pointing to polling that showed “a rapid erosion of support for the president in must-win Pennsylvania within the previous few days.
“He didn’t think the campaign sufficiently acknowledged the pain inflation was causing,” Thompson and Tapper wrote. “And while the president needed to prove the debate had been an aberration, for some reason he hadn’t yet done so.”
According to Shapiro, the president tried to address some of the governor’s concerns. But before he could do so in full, Jill Biden gave what the authors called “a clear signal that the conversation was over.”
“Alright,” the first lady said, standing up. “We gotta go.”
As the first couple pulled away, Shapiro told the authors that he thought the Bidens “didn’t want to hear the facts on the ground.”
Exactly two weeks later, Biden dropped out of the 2024 race and endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris. On Nov. 5, Trump won Pennsylvania’s key 19 electoral votes by more than 120,000 votes out of nearly 7 million ballots cast.
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