Chapter 33
The plan was that we’d eat early so that afterward, everyone could head over to celebrate with Vice President Harris and her team at Howard University. We expected that the results would be coming in late into the night, that ballots might not be counted for days.
TVs were on in the background but on low, and very early—too early—it appeared to be going a certain way.
A flood of calls were coming into the White House. People were concerned.
“This is not good,” they were saying. “We don’t have the numbers.”
At dawn, I woke to Willow pawing at me to get up.
I had planned to sleep a little later and to go to an exercise class at nine, but she demanded breakfast. A few hours earlier, I’d heard Joe climbing into bed.
I noticed that he didn’t wake me to say Kamala had won, and as I drifted back to sleep, I decided that the decision wasn’t in yet.
After all, we’d had to wait almost five days before Joe was declared the winner in 2020.
As I put food in front of Willow, petted her, and said, “You’re welcome,” I heard my phone ping.
“You up?” Anthony texted.
“Yes… why?” I responded. In that moment, I knew. Waiting for my first cup of coffee to finish brewing, I scrolled through dozens and dozens of text messages that had come through from friends and family while I’d been sleeping:
“I feel sick.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Oh, Jill.”
I grabbed my coffee and walked into the bedroom to find that Joe was awake. I sat down next to him on the bed.
“Joe, do you know he won?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
In a daze, I began returning calls from the grandkids, who were beside themselves.
Everyone on TV was offering explanations for Kamala’s loss. Prices were high. She was accused of seeming inauthentic. A lot of people weren’t ready for a woman president. An anti-trans ad had bombarded swing states. Pick your depressing reason.
The first time I saw Kamala after the election was on Veterans Day in the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House.
Joe and I met her there to drive out to Arlington National Cemetery together—a reminder of our shared commitment to putting service before self.
Side by side, she and Joe laid a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
I vowed to wrap things up as well as I could, and to do as much as I could with the rest of my time.
I hosted a summit on women’s health. I traveled to the Middle East. I kept teaching full-time, and I kept up with my duties as First Lady.
I tried to uphold the traditions around the transition.
I invited Melania for tea. She declined, citing a prior commitment.
For our last holiday in the White House, 2024, we had to plan the holiday decor without knowing what would happen with the election.
I wanted to keep it simple because of the widespread fear that if the election was called for the Democrats, the result might be a civil war.
Yes, we really did have that concern. And, at the time, world peace felt very far away.
So, for our theme that year, I chose “A Season of Peace and Light.” We filled the whole main hallway with a thousand white paper doves, as if filling the White House with warmth and beauty and symbols of reconciliation could create a sense of harmony that would carry into the new administration.
Exhausted at the end of a holiday party, I was walking down the festive hall toward the elevator when Kamala came up to me.
“I love you, Jill Biden,” she said.
I felt tenderly toward her as we watched everything wind down around us.
“I love you, too,” I said.
I’d felt in my bones that the next residents of this house would be Kamala and Doug.
Those final few weeks were a whirlwind of packing and taking care of a long list of agenda items surrounding the transition.
If I’d thought winning would satisfy Joe’s opponent, that it would cause him to forget about us, I’d have been mistaken.
Nearly every day I heard a new conspiracy theory involving our family.
One was that in Joe’s final year in office, I was leading cabinet meetings.
On September, 20, 2024, I dropped by one cabinet meeting to give opening remarks on women’s health research for five minutes.
As soon as I’d given my remarks, I left.
Another theory had it that I pushed Joe to run and kept him in the race to stay in my role. This, too, is incorrect.
The question of pardons had weighed heavily on Joe, and I’d watched him struggle with it for months.
Joe’s senior advisors told him not to pardon Hunter, and Joe had not planned to.
Then he caught wind of just how vindictive the incoming administration was likely to be.
Joe also came to believe that it was unfair how Hunter had been taken to trial for something that under other circumstances would have been a minor infraction resulting in a quick plea deal.
We’d seen Hunter, now several years sober, pay the price for his former notoriety, becoming practically unemployable.
Right-wing news hosts used him as a reliable ratings-boosting punching bag, and the paparazzi stalked his every move.
After the guilty verdict, when it became clear that Hunter might be facing prison time, and when others in Joe’s orbit appeared to be vulnerable to unjust, politically motivated punishments, Joe made the call.
Advisors protested, but Joe remained adamant that he would not let his family be punished for his political life.
Once Joe and I had packed up, the White House looked barren.
My plants were gone. The paintings I’d chosen for the walls had been removed.
It actually made it easier to leave, seeing how impersonal the house had become.
I hardly saw Joe during that time because he and his aides were trying to finish up so many things and to shore up as much of his legacy as they could.
The incoming president would hang a picture of an autopen machine to represent President Joe Biden.
Joe’s political rivals would later insist Joe hadn’t known what was happening at the end of his administration, or that his aides were running the White House—or I was.
All of this seemed too absurd to even dignify with a denial.
I had never even seen an autopen. Before it existed, a secretary would copy the president’s signature.
It wasn’t nefarious; there was just too much paper for any one person.
Joe worked long hours in those weeks making one decision after the other, just as he had before the election.
One bright spot in Joe’s schedule on his way out was the bestowal of the Medal of Freedom to a group of people who’d made America better.
That event always has a bit of magic to it, and that year it felt particularly warm and heartfelt, with tributes to José Andrés, Bono, Hillary Clinton, Magic Johnson, Ralph Lauren, and Anna Wintour.
I was so proud that our administration was honoring great people who had accomplished the extraordinary.
Even more, I loved watching the faces of their family members—so proud of their loved one.
I, too, had experienced the joy of watching as Joe received the Medal of Freedom with Distinction from Barack in 2017.
It’s definitely an emotional, reflective moment—you can’t help but feel a lump in your throat.
There were quieter joys, too. When our grandson Beau, who lived in Southern California, came to DC for the holidays, he found the snow new and exciting.
I took him out to the Rose Garden to make a snowman.
The chef, Tommy, brought out vegetables from the refrigerator—a carrot for a nose, beets for the eyes.
Someone produced a scarf, and just like that: the perfect snowman.
Little Beau was mesmerized. I also showed him the White House Children’s Garden, where his handprints and the bronze handprints of presidents’ grandchildren since the 1960s have been encased in stones on the patio.
I always enjoyed it as a way to remember the special relationship between families who have lived at the White House, whether Republican or Democrat.
That connection became clearer to me toward the end of our term as various former inhabitants came to visit what had been their childhood home.
Chelsea Clinton brought her children to see it.
One was a little prodigy and rattled off presidential history—no surprise to me, having seen how bright Chelsea was at that age.
That final month, we helped host the state funeral of Jimmy Carter, including a dinner at the White House for fifty-five members of the Carter family.
At the funeral, Joe gave a beautiful eulogy, during which he told the story of a visit he and I made to see the Carters in Plains, Georgia, in April 2021.
They’d been living there in that redbrick house together for seventy-seven years.
When we saw them, they were cheerful, if frail.
At Rosalynn’s funeral in November 2023, it was clear that Jimmy didn’t have much time left.
However, his mind was still connected to the world around him.
In a private moment, he whispered “I love you” to us, the last thing we’d hear him say.
On our last night at the White House, January 19, 2025, we said goodbye to the staff, which was heartbreaking.
We had just returned that day from South Carolina—the same place where Joe’s presidential campaign had truly begun.
Now we were bidding farewell to so many good friends and people we loved.
When I headed up to our room, Joe was still with his staff finishing off his list of pardons and being briefed on the next day’s activity.
I lit the fire and tried to enjoy one last evening in that beautiful room, but I couldn’t stay awake.
I fell asleep full of gratitude, but also anxious for what the next day would bring, as the president-elect prepared to return like some kind of avenging spirit.