Ouch: NBC’s Melvin Brutally Grills Jill Biden on Sleepy Joe, Pardoning Crackhead Hunter

Curtis Houck
June 1st, 2026 11:34 PM

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Former First Lady Jill Biden began her book tour with a taped interview on CBS Sunday Morning with pal Rita Braver, but it truly started Monday on NBC’s Today as, in a live, 14-minute interview with co-host Craig Melvin, she was subjected to a brutal interrogation over her husband and former President Joe Biden’s infamous June 2024 debate, his disastrous reelection bid, and the cowardly decision to pardon son/crackhead Hunter Biden on his final day in office.

Melvin started with two brief, easy questions about “[w]hy did you feel like you had to set the record straight now” and how the former President is doing as he battles stage four prostate cancer. But then it got tough real fast.

After one short clip of Biden’s bumbling debate performance, he ripped her for hypocrisy in writing about fearing Joe was having a stroke, but still taking him to a post-debate rally and Waffle House trip.

“In the days and weeks after [the 2024 debate], you continued to insist that the President was fine. How do you square thinking that he may have had a stroke with what you were saying in the days and weeks after? How do you square those,” he asked.

Jill told him to “look at it from my point of view”: “He gets off the stage, I see he appears to be okay. He says to me, Jill, I really, in other words, messed up, didn’t I? And I said, yes, you did. And so...I know we’re going into another event, or we have two more to do. And I — my mind is racing. What do I say to him?...I’m his wife. I’ve got to lift him up.”

When she said she chose “to say things that are true” by remarking he “answered every question,” Melvin incredulously interjected: “That’s a pretty low bar.”

She doubled down, meaning she didn’t answer Melvin’s question about why she didn’t do something more drastic if she believed his life was in danger.

Melvin next posed to her Special Counsel Robert Hur’s conclusion about Joe, the infamous George Clooney op-ed in The New York Times, and comments from his first White House chief of staff, Ron Klain.

Jill stammered through this one as well by insisting “he aged” and “got older” just as “we were all aging.”

Melvin was ready for this dodge, so he put on-screen her own words from the book as a way to wonder if she was truly “impartial” in deciding whether he could run for a second term (click “expand” to read her answer):

He then wondered straight up whether, “[i]f you could go back in a time machine and do it all over again, would you have encouraged him maybe to not run again.”

She tried to have it both ways by saying the blowback against Joe “was so hurtful” and caused so much “pain” while also saying quitting the race “had to be his decision alone.”

Ignoring the role networks like his played in this entire cover-up, an exasperated Melvin called up a 2023 poll about Biden’s fitness for office. This led Jill to what was arguably her most open statement of frustration with how the interview was going (click “expand”):

MELVIN: But Dr. Biden, to be fair, I mean, there’s a poll, there’s a poll from 10 months before that debate moment. I mean, you’re — you’re noting the folks who wanted him to run. This is August 2023. We’re not talking Republican voters here. We’re talking 77 percent of everyone asked, was he too old to be effective to serve in other terms [sic]? Some of them said, yeah, he’s too old, Democrats, seven in 10. How do you — how do you square that with the decision to put them through it again? Because he really wanted to.

JILL BIDEN: Well, you know, I square it with in 2023, the Democratic Party was behind my husband. And then the debate happened and things changed. So, you know, in my book, I write about everything that happened.

MELVIN: You do.

JILL BIDEN: I put it all in context. You read my book.

MELVIN: You do, yes.

JILL BIDEN: Thank you for that. And so, I think readers will understand from my point of view, and I think we have to point out, Craig. Like, that’s one chapter of my book. My book is not about politics. It’s about me, my reflections, my life, my life as a teacher. My life is the first working lady — you know, First Lady. I went to work. I taught at a community college. I took a paycheck. I wanted to say to American women, look at me. I am like you are.

MELVIN: Yep.

JILL BIDEN: I’m balancing a job, my family, and then my duties as First Lady. And that’s what my book is about.

MELVIN: Yes.

JILL BIDEN: It’s not all about this debate, which was one moment in time, or of our four years.

Melvin also didn’t win her over with these hardballs about Kamala Harris and disgust amongst Democrats about the timing of her White House memoir (click “expand”):

MELVIN: In her book last fall, former Vice President Kamala Harris —

JILL BIDEN: Uh-huh.

MELVIN: — she wrote that staying in as long as he did was recklessness, that “the stakes were simply too high to leave to one person’s ambition.” Does the former Vice President perhaps have a bit of a point there?

JILL BIDEN: That is her point of view, and if she felt that way, she should have said it.

MELVIN: The book, it’s already, as you probably have heard, some fellow Democrats have expressed some frustrations with the timing of the book, reopening old wounds, potentially —

JILL BIDEN: I’m not reopening old wounds.

MELVIN: — but this is just — this is just some of what they’ve been told over the last few days. Take a listen.

SENATOR CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT) [on CBS’s Face the Nation, 05/31/26]: I think Democrats do have to be honest about the mistakes that we made in 2024. Obviously, in retrospect, Joe Biden should have stepped away from that race.

CONGRESSMAN ADAM SMITH (D-WA) [on NBC News NOW, 05/29/26]: Jill Biden, his family, his inner circle, I mean, they did this country, and certainly the Democratic Party, a grave disservice by allowing this to go forward.

MEGHAN HAYS [on C-SPAN, 05/29/26]: When we get pulled back into conversations about age and the election in 24, it’s never going to be a good place for Democrats.

MELVIN: What’s your — what’s your response?

JILL BIDEN: We are moving on. You know, Democrats have a great future. I think, you know, we’re looking forward to winning the midterms. And I think things are going to move forward in a more positive way. And yes, we look back and we’re going to learn from the mistakes we made.

Jill must have thought the interview was turning back toward softer topics as Melvin told her: “You’re right. The book isn’t about politics.”

Much to her chagrin, Melvin shrewdly used that as a segue to Hunter Biden and that, in the book, she “acknowledge[d] that the former President’s senior advisors said not a good idea, but ultimately, you and the former President decided that, for your family, it would be a good idea.”

After she said “I did support, of course” because “I’m his mother,” Melvin correctly called out this (putrid) precedent it set: “Have you made peace with the idea, perhaps, that a decision that could have been good for the Biden family may not have been necessarily good for the office of the President or President moving forward?”

Like a true politician’s wife, Jill maintained “Joe wasn’t thinking about himself” because, “you know, he said all along he was not going to pardon Hunter.”

Referencing an early June 2024 ABC interview, Jill admitted without stating it out loud that the only reason Joe pardoned Hunter was because Trump won the election and they “could not see our son” go to jail thanks to Trump’s “political” Justice Department (click “expand”):

JILL BIDEN: Then the administration changed. You know, the process was not fair to Hunter. And I could — Joe could not see our son — you know, then the current President won, and the Justice Department changed, it became political. You know, Craig, you and I both know we grew up with, you know, the three separate branches of government, hands off, you know, Joe would never have interfered in — in the Justice Department, and told the Justice Department what to do or how to handle it. So, we were never — I mean, at the end, when we saw the Trump-- if someone tells you who they are, believe it. Trump said, “I want Hunter Biden to go to jail.”

JILL BIDEN: We could not let our son go to jail on a — on that charge for a gun that he bought — 

MELVIN: So —

JILL BIDEN: — and he had for 11 days. We could not let him do it.

MELVIN: — so, the President basically —

JILL BIDEN: Changed his mind.

MELVIN: — changed his mind —

JILL BIDEN: Yes.

MELVIN: — because he lost faith in the system?

JILL BIDEN: Because — yes, I guess it is, yeah.

With less than 90 seconds left, the NBC co-host let her off by asking a softball about what she wants the Biden family’s “personal legacy” to be:

[I]t’s interesting because we started this conversation by talking about our connection. And the Biden legacy so much of it is going to involve cancer. You lost — Beau — to cancer. You launched the Moonshot Initiative, and now the former President has stage four prostate cancer. In — in terms of legacy, as you look back on this chapter, what do you want the Biden family legacy to be? The — not the political legacy — the personal legacy when it comes to these families right now, who are in similar fights?

Thankfully for Jill, she migrated over to the show’s fourth hour where the waters — managed by Jenna Bush Hager and Sheinelle Jones — were far calmer and friendlier.

To see the relevant NBC transcript from June 1, click here.

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