Jill Biden's new memoir describes tense and limited interactions with Melania Trump during the transition back to the White House in January 2025, including what she characterized as an awkward motorcade ride after Donald Trump's second inauguration and lingering friction tied to the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
In excerpts from "A View from the East Wing" published by The Washington Post ahead of the book's release Tuesday, the former first lady recounted a "stone-faced" ride from the White House to the Capitol following the traditional pre-inauguration tea. Biden suggested Melania Trump believed President Joe Biden was personally responsible for the FBI search of the Trump family's Florida residence.
"Melania blamed Joe personally for the FBI searching through her private spaces at Mar-a-Lago," Biden wrote, according to the excerpt. "I have compassion for her, having been subject to the same kind of search. I knew how distressing it was to have agents rummage through your underwear drawer."
Biden added that Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar's husband, John Bessler, appeared to serve as an unofficial conversational buffer during the ride. According to the memoir, Bessler attempted to keep the discussion going by asking Melania Trump about her son Barron's studies at New York University.
"'NYU,' Melania said, looking out the window," Biden wrote, adding that "Melania kept trying to switch the topic to the weather."
The memoir also revisits the final months of Joe Biden's presidency and the fallout from his widely criticized 2024 debate performance against Trump. Jill Biden wrote that while watching the debate she feared her husband was suffering a medical emergency.
"Is this a stroke?" she recalled thinking. "Has he been drugged?" She later acknowledged that her public defense of the president after the debate "sounded a little too disconnected from what people saw."
Clips of Biden promoting her book had circulated last week as she opened up on how she feared the worst as she watched her husband choke against Trump. "I don't know what happened," she told CBS News Sunday Morning's Rita Braver in an interview due to air this weekend.
Trump responded to that clip in a Truth Social post, mocking her account of the debate and suggesting she should have intervened on stage if she genuinely believed her husband was suffering a medical emergency.
"She said that she thought he was having a 'stroke,' and various other really bad things, and yet never rushed onto the stage to help her troubled husband, as any good wife would do," Trump wrote.
