First lady Jill Biden spoke at a private Democratic National Committee (DNC) fundraiser on Saturday, discussing some of the challenges and frustrations she and husband, President Joe Biden, have faced as the administration has sought to address a range of issues.
She said the president had to grapple with a range of issues as president, hindering his ability to focus on other plans and goals, according to CNN.
“He’s just had so many things thrown his way,” Jill Biden said while in Nantucket, Mass., the network reported. “Who would have ever thought about what happened [with the Supreme Court overturning] Roe v Wade? Well, maybe we saw it coming, but still we didn’t believe it. The gun violence in this country is absolutely appalling. We didn’t see the war in Ukraine coming.”
“[The President] had so many hopes and plans for things he wanted to do, but every time you turned around, he had to address the problems of the moment,” CNN reported.
President Biden has suffered decreasing approval ratings and has been caught up in an abundance of domestic and international issues since he took office. These include backlash against the military evacuation from Afghanistan, persistently high inflation and the Russian invasion in Ukraine. He’s also faced infighting among his party that has, at times, hindered the ability to pass legislation on topics that are a priority for him.
Recent polling has also revealed that voters, including Democrats, are not very enthusiastic about a 2024 Biden presidential bid, even though the White House has maintained that he will be running in the next election cycle.
That polling has complicated an already challenging midterm environment for Democrats who are bracing for losses in November. But Jill Biden sounded undeterred while speaking at the DNC fundraiser about a pessimistic outcome in the midterms.
“I know there are so many nay-sayers who say we’ll get slammed in the midterms. Okay. The Republicans are working hard, they stick together, for good or evil. So, we just have to work harder,” she said, according to CNN.
Still, Jill Biden revealed that she, too, had experienced her own challenges as first lady.
“I was saying to myself, ‘Okay, I was second lady. I worked on community colleges. I worked on military families. I’ve worked on cancer.’ They were supposed to be my areas of focus. But then when we got [in the White House,] I had to be, with all that was happening, the first lady of the moment,” Jill Biden said, CNN reported.