For months after leaving the White House, Jill Biden said almost nothing publicly about the two events that upended her family’s life: her husband dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, and his subsequent cancer diagnosis. Now, with a memoir set to publish in June 2026, she’s finally talking. And what she’s saying is both more candid and more complicated than most people expected.
The Memoir That Promises to “Set the Record Straight”
The book is called “View from the East Wing: A Memoir,” and it’s coming out June 2, 2026, through Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. In an Instagram video announcing the project, Jill Biden made it clear this isn’t some polished, feel-good political retrospective. She said she wanted to “set the record straight” about what really happened during her husband’s presidency and the chaotic final stretch that led to his withdrawal from the race.
According to the publisher’s press release, the book will address “for the first time” her experiences before, during, and after the unexpected ending to Joe Biden’s reelection bid. That three-week period, when pressure mounted from within the Democratic Party for her husband to step aside, is something she says she never discussed publicly. She saved all of it for the book.
In a brief phone interview with the Associated Press, she described the writing process as “somewhat healing.” That word choice says a lot. You don’t need healing from something that went smoothly.
What She Said About Joe’s Cancer
The cancer diagnosis landed like a bomb. In May 2025, just four months after leaving office, Joe Biden’s office announced he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, with a Gleason score of 9, the highest risk category. The cancer had already spread to his bones.
In her AP interview, Jill Biden was remarkably direct about the prognosis. She said doctors told them Joe would “live out his natural life,” but she didn’t sugarcoat the reality either. “The fact that it is in his bones means that he will have cancer, you know, all his lifetime,” she said.
Then she added, with a flash of humor that felt genuinely human: “Like most retired couples, he’ll probably drive me crazy till the end of it.”
She also described the initial diagnosis as “quite a shock.” That might seem obvious, but remember, this is a woman who stood next to her husband for decades in public life and rarely let the mask slip. For her to call anything a shock, publicly, is notable.
Joe Biden’s Own Words on the Diagnosis
Joe Biden didn’t stay quiet either. At a Memorial Day ceremony in New Castle, Delaware, on May 30, 2025, he made his first public remarks about the cancer. He said he’d decided on a treatment option and would be taking various medications. “The expectation is, we’re going to be able to beat this. It’s not in any organ. My bones are strong. It hasn’t penetrated, so I’m feeling good,” he told the crowd.
He also addressed the elephant in the room. When asked about the controversy surrounding his mental and physical capabilities while in office, he joked, with a smile: “You can see that. I’m mentally incompetent and I can’t walk.” Whether you find that funny or not probably depends on which side of the aisle you sit on, but you can’t say the guy doesn’t have a sense of humor about himself.
The Treatment Timeline
Biden began hormone therapy in pill form shortly after the diagnosis. By October 2025, his care had entered a new phase. A spokesperson confirmed he was undergoing radiation therapy at Penn Medicine Radiation Oncology in Philadelphia, a five-week course alongside the ongoing hormone treatment.
He completed that round of radiation and, as his spokeswoman told CBS News, “rang the bell,” the tradition marking the end of a radiation course. The American Society for Radiation Oncology even issued a congratulatory statement. But ringing the bell doesn’t mean you’re done. Further care was expected.
He also had Mohs surgery in September 2025 to remove skin cancer lesions from his forehead. A large bandage was visible in public appearances for a while. His physician wrote in a memo that all cancerous tissue from that procedure was successfully removed and no further treatment was needed for that particular issue.
Questions About How Long It Went Undetected
One detail that raised eyebrows: multiple oncologists told NBC News that given the nature and stage of Biden’s cancer, it was possible the disease had gone undiagnosed for years. His last known PSA test was in 2014. He did not undergo prostate cancer screening during his last medical checkup in office in February 2024. Men his age are not typically screened, but the gap between tests is hard to ignore given how aggressive the cancer turned out to be.
That raises uncomfortable questions about the White House medical team’s approach, but those are questions that remain largely unanswered for now.
The Political Fallout She’s Addressing
The book isn’t just about cancer. A huge part of it covers the political drama of 2024. In April 2023, Joe Biden, then 80 and the oldest president in U.S. history, announced he was running for a second term. His age immediately became the central issue of his candidacy. Then came the debate.
In June 2024, Biden turned in what most observers called a disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump. He struggled to land points, spoke in a raspy voice, and appeared to lose his train of thought multiple times. Aides blamed the performance on a cold. The public was not convinced.
Democrats began openly pressuring him to step aside. After initially insisting he would stay in the race, Biden withdrew a few weeks later and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris became the Democratic nominee but lost to Trump in November 2024.
Jill Biden has never publicly discussed how she felt about those three weeks. By all accounts, she was one of the last people who wanted her husband to step down. The memoir promises to be the first time she tells that story in her own words.
Pushback Against the “Decline” Narrative
The timing of the book also coincides with a wave of reporting that the Bidens have pushed back against. The book “Original Sin,” written by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, alleges that Biden had physical and mental impairments while president that were covered up by people in his inner circle.
Both Joe and Jill Biden appeared on ABC’s “The View” and generally rejected the claims. “They are wrong. There’s nothing to sustain that,” Joe Biden said.
Meanwhile, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt publicly called on Jill Biden to “speak up about what she saw in regards to her husband and when she saw it and what she knew,” accusing her of lying. That’s a strong accusation from a sitting administration’s spokesperson, and it shows just how politically charged the whole question of Biden’s capabilities remains.
The memoir, it seems, is Jill Biden’s answer to all of it. Whether it satisfies her critics is another matter entirely.
Where Things Stand Now
As of early 2026, Joe Biden is 83. Jill Biden says he’s still heading into Washington, D.C. weekly for meetings or speeches. He’s been seen at several public events, including the funeral of Rev. Jesse Jackson, speaking engagements, and even taking a commercial flight. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute and spoke publicly in Boston after completing his radiation treatments.
But not everyone close to the situation paints the same picture. The Washington Post reported that four sources familiar with Biden’s condition said there hadn’t been many updates about his well-being in recent months, and that he’d grown more tired in recent weeks. A fifth person countered that he remains “encouraged and positive about his prognosis given his positive response to treatment.”
He’s also reportedly working on his own presidential memoir, which he sold to Little, Brown & Co. for about $10 million in July 2025. The title and release date haven’t been announced yet.
The Bigger Picture
Jill Biden spent nearly 50 years as a political spouse before becoming first lady. She’s been through campaigns, losses, personal tragedies, and the full weight of the American political machine. For most of that time, she kept her feelings about the hard stuff private.
This memoir appears to be her attempt to change that. She told the AP she wants to provide a “more balanced view” of her husband’s presidency. Whether the book delivers on that promise, or whether it reads as damage control, will probably depend on who’s reading it.
But the fact that she’s talking at all, about the cancer, about the withdrawal, about the pressure, is itself the story. For a woman who has spent her entire public life choosing her words with extreme care, breaking that silence means something. What exactly it means, we’ll find out on June 2.
