Joe and Jill Biden went on ‘The View’ to let us know they still don’t quite get it

For anyone who wants to criticize Joe Biden for how he did during the presidency, his wife Jill wants you to know that the presidency is a tough job. People who thought he wasn’t up to scratch “didn’t see how hard Joe worked every day,” she told The View during their joint interview Thursday morning, as she and her husband launched their reputational comeback tour. Listen, I don’t think you understand: Jill was in bed at night and Joe was still on the phone! It was nonstop! “That phone could ring at 11 o’clock or at 2 a.m”, because being the president is “a lifestyle”.

Luckily, America is full of people who can’t countenance taking a phone call that late for their job, otherwise that might’ve been received unsympathetically. Of course, while Joe was working 24/7, he was making a $400,000 salary, with a further untaxed expenses allowance of $169,000 for travel and entertainment on top of that. But you wouldn’t accept less than that to take phone calls at bedtime, right? Right?!

That moment underscored what we already suspected about the Bidens — that, likeable and inoffensive as they are, they’re out-of-touch. Thursday was Joe Biden’s first live interview since losing the 2024 election, and his first turn at the View table since last September — a reunion greeted with Whoopi Goldberg's firm "we're not gonna fool around.” The TV show and the former president are a natural match: both have been on air far longer than their critics think they should, both remain strangely comforting to large swathes of Americans, and both occasionally let something deeply weird slip out before anyone can stop them.

The president-emeritus was hoarse and slightly breathless in the first 20 minutes of his appearance. He referenced his time as VP — “I was the vice president, I was with Barack…” — before the sentence wandered off into the political equivalent of a cul-de-sac. The co-hosts leaned in like sympathetic aunts, hoping he’d find the thread again.

Still, he eventually got in a few decent zingers, calling Trump’s return “the worst 100 days any president’s ever had,” before adding, “I wouldn’t say honesty’s been a strong point.”

After the first ad break, Biden had settled into his familiar groove: avuncular, mildly baffled, and occasionally interrupted by flashes of clarity that reminded everyone why he got elected in the first place. Asked about Trump’s first 100 days, he genuflected, prompting Anna Navarro to suggest he’d make a good pope (perhaps a more age-appropriate election race for him, considering the Vatican’s median age.) Earnest, folksy, and sprinkled with the kind of self-deprecating humor that makes you forget he once called a voter a "lying, dog-faced pony soldier,” he managed to shoehorn in an aside about foreign policy, NATO and Putin, even as he acknowledged that The View doesn’t do that kind of thing.

Joy Behar suggested that Trump’s fixation on Biden is “shrink territory.” Why is he obsessed with you, she wondered? Without missing a beat, Biden delivered his cleanest jab of the morning: “I beat him.” The table roared and the crowd applauded. It was a rare moment where the old campaign snap resurfaced, even if only briefly.

Did he take responsibility for Trump’s return? “Yes,” Biden said plainly, a confession that somehow felt both refreshingly adult and politically useless. Then he went off-script to defend his infrastructure agenda — Amtrak, bridges, drug prices — noting, not inaccurately, that “we weren’t quite as good about advertising it” as his rival. This may be the understatement of the century from a president who passed a trillion-dollar bill and still let Trump define him as a man who spends most of his time napping.

On Kamala Harris, he was firm: they speak frequently, and no, he didn’t ask her to stay uncomfortably close to his policies when she picked up his campaign; in fact, they “argued like hell”. And then, as Joy invoked Trump’s claim that Biden’s autopen makes all laws “void and vacant,” Biden quipped, “Well, he’s vacant.” A charitable laugh came from everyone, even though it’s essentially a playground retort.

We were two ad breaks in before the former First Lady made her appearance. And that’s when Whoopi Goldberg brought up the debate. The car crash. The catastrophic “oh no, Grandpa wandered onstage again” moment.

“Everybody lost their minds,” Goldberg said, as she described the aftermath of the disastrous back-and-forth that led to Biden stepping aside for Kamala Harris. Joe conceded he’d been sick, not as an excuse, just as… well, yes, an excuse.

Jill jumped in: “We all saw it, it was terrible.” A rare moment of spousal candor. “Yes, you screwed up,” she says she told him onstage in the immediate aftermath. But she counseled him to put his shoulders back and turn up for his supporters. And by the way, she didn’t “sequester him” in the days before the debate like some geriatric hostage, either. “I wish she had,” Joe joked. He’s not the only one.

There was a little bitterness there. Jill added that it was “hurtful” when people suggested she’d been Lady Macbething things for Joe — especially when such accusations came from “so-called friends”. Asked earlier in the interview about his friendship with Obama and whether it’s been damaged by the whole debacle, Joe either sidestepped the question or forgot it. And, of course, Jill underlined for us all how the presidency is actually hard.

There were vintage Joe Biden moments — “I shouldn’t say this” and “I’ve been advised not to say this” followed by milquetoast stuff about how great his infrastructure achievements were — as well as a clearly rehearsed aside about how the average billionaire in America pays just 8.2% tax, which went down well. Then there was the old “‘We’re still the greatest country in the history of the world.” At least someone still believes it.

As the program drew to a close, Jill got to talk for a bit about her new job in women’s healthcare advocacy, and Joe got to reveal that he’s writing another book (they’ve only given him a year to do it!) The broader aim here was clearly a little image rehab so that both of those extracurriculars go well for them. A reminder that Joe Biden is still alive, still speaking in complete sentences, and capable of turning up for a hopefully lucrative post-presidential speaking tour.

The View, with its gently liberal studio audience and rotating panel of supportive head nods, is a safe zone in which to spread that message — a warm bubble in which even a misstep is met with an encouraging “Aww!” and a break for ad time. However, if this was meant to be the soft launch of the post-presidency messaging tour, it’s clear the product still needs some polishing.