Dr. Jill Biden visited The Daily Show on Wednesday night. Yes, she had her own project to promote—Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself—a book that host Trevor Noah called “genuinely one of the most surprising memoirs” he has read recently. But she was also there to speak on behalf of her 2020 Democratic frontrunner husband, former Vice President Joe Biden.
It wasn’t until the latter part of their conversation that Noah brought up some of the more difficult parts of the campaign process with his guest.
“This is your third time. You know how hard it is, you know how taxing it is, you know how invasive it is, you know how vitriolic it is going to be,” the host told her. “Are you ready for what is about to happen to your lives?”
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Biden began her answer by saying that for the past two years people have been coming up to her in supermarkets and airports and urging her husband to run for president.
“And we weren’t going to run, but then we kept hearing this,” she said. “And so we started to think about it and then we called our family together, we spoke to our children, we got our grandchildren all together. And we said, what do you think? Do you think Pop should run for president? And to a grandchild they said Pop has to run. He has to change the direction and bring people together and stop all this vitriol in this country.”
Then Noah broached what has been the clearest obstacle to Biden achieving that goal to date: as he put it, “the story of him just being too massage-y with people.” He asked Jill Biden if she thinks it’s “strange or fair” that she has been asked to speak to these issues on behalf of her husband or if it’s “part of the game.”
“No, I think that’s part of it,” she answered. “And look, it took a lot of courage for women to step forward and say you know, you’re in my space and Joe heard that. And it just won’t happen again. He heard what they were saying.”
The former vice president has apologized to the women who have accused him of inappropriately touching them—albeit in a non-sexual way—saying in an unfortunately awkward video, “I get it” and promising to be “much more mindful” moving forward.
Just this week, however, his interaction with a 10-year-old girl at a campaign event in Houston caught the eye of some political reporters. “I’ll bet you’re as bright as you are good-looking,” he told the girl before walking her to the back of the room to speak to meet members of the media and keeping his hands on her shoulders for an unusually long time.
