Jill Biden accused of ‘elder abuse’ by Washington Post columnist for pushing husband to seek re-election

A Washington socialite and journalist accused former first lady Jill Biden of “elder abuse” in an explosive new interview after former President Joe Biden was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer.

Sally Quinn, a D.C. insider and longtime columnist for The Washington Post, took aim at the former first lady during a wide-ranging interview with journalist Tara Palmeri on the “Tara Palmeri Show” on Wednesday. She accused Jill Biden of pushing him to run for re-election despite his apparent cognitive decline.

“I blame Jill Biden for this. Jill Biden is his wife. And if Jill Biden had stood up and gone to him and said, ‘Joe, you can’t do it’… He wouldn’t have run,” Quinn told Palmeri. “She clearly was in favor of his running and I just think it was a terrible disservice to the country.”

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Former President Joe Biden and former first lady Jill Biden were scrutinized by longtime D.C. journalist Sally Quinn in a new interview. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Quinn described feeling aghast by how Jill Biden continued to push ahead and rally support for her husband’s presidential campaign immediately after the “hideous” June 2024 presidential debate, which sparked debate over whether Biden was fit to serve another four years.

“She wasn’t protecting him… I thought it was elder abuse, really,” Quinn declared.

Quinn, who has dined with the Washington establishment for decades, said Biden’s apparent worsening health was an open secret among the Washington elite, who were worried about Biden’s ability to handle another four years in the Oval Office.

“Everybody thought he shouldn’t run,” she told Palmeri. “People were just distraught that he was running and terrible for the party.”

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President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden. (Win McNamee/Pool via Reuters | Getty Images)

“I think everybody was horrified that he was put in a position where he was allowed to run, by his staff and by his wife,” she continued. “People felt sorry for him. But still it was his egotistical decision to stay in office and look what happened.”

The journalist was famously married to Watergate-era Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee, who suffered from dementia until his death in 2014.

She said Biden’s forgetfulness and habit of wandering off reminded her of how her late husband acted during his last years of life.

“It looks like the beginning of dementia to me,” she said of Biden.

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President Joe Biden speaks in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

The D.C. insider said she was shocked to learn, alongside the rest of the country, of Biden’s late-stage cancer diagnosis and wondered how it could not have been caught sooner.

“The president of the United States has the best medical care in the world, or should, and it should’ve been diagnosed a long time ago,” she said. “It’s hard for me not to believe that they didn’t know about it and were waiting to reveal it until it got too aggressive.”

A Biden spokesperson confirmed to Fox News that the former president’s last known prostate cancer screening test was in 2014.

Biden’s health is once again in the media spotlight after the release of CNN journalist Jake Tapper and Axios journalist Alex Thompson’s new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” which reports claims of a White House cover-up of the then-president’s apparent cognitive decline.

Jill Biden’s office did not return a request for comment.

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